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

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

The most common form of terrorism in the U.S.A. is that carried on by bulldozers and chainsaws. It is not enough to understand the natural world; the point is to defend and preserve it. Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.

The true, unacknowledged purpose of capital punishment is to inspire fear and awe -- fear and awe of the State.

Tofu and futons. The adepts of Orientalism seem to spend most of their lives reclining. They can't quite summon the energy to crawl up onto a chair. Even their Yogic exercises are carried out in a prone or sitting position.

Reincarnation? There is such a thing. What could be more Mozartian than the Nutcracker Suite?

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