I don't want them to be told to remember me.

Adolescence hits boys harder than it does girls. Girls bleed a little and their breasts pop out, big deal, but adolescence lands on a guy with both feet. . . . Your body is engulfed by chemicals of rage and despair, you pound, you shriek, you batter your head against the trees. You come away wounded, feeling that life is unknowable, can never be understood, only endured and sometimes cheated.

Humor, a good sense of it, is to Americans what manhood is to Spaniards, and we will go to great lengths to prove it. Experiments with laboratory rats have shown that, if one psychologist in the room laughs at something a rat does, all of the other psychologists will laugh equally. Nobody wants to be left holding the joke.

I'm a lucky guy. I get to sit around every day and indulge in make believe and get paid for it.

Face it: a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality.

You can go your whole life and not need math or physics for a minute, but the ability to tell a joke is always handy.

People in cars cause accidents and accidents in cars cause people.