You get old and you realize there are no answers, just stories.

God plays a lot of jokes on us to get our attention.

Years ago, manhood was an opportunity for achievement, and now it is a problem to be overcome.

... life itself is brief, and that is what charges the day with such ridiculous beauty.

When it comes to finding available men in Minnesota, the odds are good, but the goods are odd.

Forget what you learned about poetry in school. (That it's complex, opaque, a problem to be solved in 1500 words by tomorrow.) Poetry is the last preserve of honest speech and the outspoken heart. It holds the cadence of common life. It has a passion for truth and justice and liberty; it is a buoy to people in ordinary trouble: to a friend whose life has gone skidding into the meridian, who has been struck by bad news, who is frying eggs and hash browns and has whiny child clinging to his pant leg.

...opening up a newspaper is the key to looking classy and smart. Never mind the bronze-plated stuff about the role of the press in a democracy - a newspaper, kiddo, is about Style.