Once I climbed into a mountain lion's cage and she bounded at me and put her paw on my face, but she kept her claws withdrawn.

Sophistication" is another word for that inventive mix of tolerance, resilience, and resourcefulness city people develop.

The question of whether it's God's green earth is not at center stage, except in the sense that if so, one is reminded with some regularity that He may be dying.

In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.

It's incongruous that the older we get, the more likely we are to turn in the direction of religion. Less vivid and intense ourselves, closer to the grave, we begin to conceive of ourselves as immortal.

There were periods during my childhood when I stammered so badly I couldn't talk at all.

It would be hard to define chaos better than as a world where children decide they don't want to live.