Cold morning on Aztec Peak Fire Lookout. First, build fire in old stove. Second, start coffee. Then, heat up last night's pork chops and spinach for breakfast. Why not? And why the hell not?

A good book is a kind of paper club, serving to rouse the slumbrous and to silence the obtuse.

The missionaries go forth to Christianize the savages - as if the savages weren't dangerous enough already.

I would never betray a friend to serve a cause. Never reject a friend to help an institution. Great nations may fall in ruin before I would sell a friend to save them.

Taxation: how the sheep are shorn.

How can I be so evil? It ain't easy.

I was once invited to take part in a heroic, possibly fatal enterprise, but I declined, mainly on account of sloth.