Life is cruel? Compared to what?

Climbing K2 or floating the Grand Canyon in an inner tube; there are some things one would rather have done than do.

It is always dishonest for a reviewer to review the author instead of the author's book.

The Proustian aquarium: grotesque and gorgeous fish drifting with languid fins through a subaqueous medium of pale violet polluted ink.

My notion of a great novel is something like a five-hundred-page shaggy-dog story, with only the punch line omitted.

A true libertarian supports free enterprise, opposes big business; supports local self-government, opposes the nation-state; supports the National Rifle Association, opposes the Pentagon.

Women truly are better than men. Otherwise, they'd be intolerable.