The desert wears... a veil of mystery. Motionless and silent it evokes in us an elusive hint of something unknown, unknowable, about to be revealed. Since the desert does not act it seems to be waiting -- but waiting for what?

There is a deep, abiding, unshakable satisfaction in a life of complete failure.

In everything but brains and brawn, women are vastly superior to men. A different race.

If there's anyone still present whom I've failed to insult . . . I apologize.

Beware the writer who always encloses the word *reality* in quotation marks: He's trying to slip something over on you. Or into you.

One day in Dipstick, Nebraska, or Landfill, Oklahoma, is worth more to me than an eternity in Dante's plastic Paradiso, or Yeats's gold-plated Byzantium.

Spartacus, like Jesus, was also crucified by the Romans. And for equally good reasons.