Government should be weak, amateurish and ridiculous. At present, it fulfills only a third of the role.

Apuleius married a rich widow, then wrote _The Golden Ass_.

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

There are two kinds of people I cannot abide: bigots and any well-organized ethnic group.

I am happy to be a regional writer. My region is the American West, old Mexico, West Virginia, New York, Europe, Australia, the human heart, and the male groin.

What ideal, immutable Platonic cloud could equal the beauty and perfection of any ordinary everyday cloud floating over, say, Tuba City, Arizona, on a hot day in June?

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