The only thing worse than a knee-jerk liberal is a knee-pad conservative.

Roosters: The cry of the male chicken is the most barbaric yawp in all of nature.

My Aunt Ida at age eighty-three: 'Yeah,' she said, 'I'll be dead pretty soon. And frankly, I don't give a damn.'

Homosexuality, like androgyny, might be an instinctive racial response to overpopulation, crowding, and stress. Both flourish when empire reaches its apogee.

If you feel that you must suffer, then plan your suffering carefully -- as you choose your dreams, as you conceive your ancestors.

You cannot reshape human nature without mutilating human beings.

In the world of words, one of my best-loved tribes is the diatribe.