Sport is a seductive metaphor (life as a game in which we gain victory through hard work, discipline, and visualizing success). but the older metaphor of farming (life as hard labor that is subject to weather and quirks of blind fate and may return no reward whatsoever and don't be surprised) is still in our blood.

A romp in the hay lingers like the first line of a song, but your true love is the one you make a life with and write more than a line about, you write a whole book.

The reason to retire is to try to avoid embarrassment; you ought to do it before people are dropping big hints. You want to be the first to come up with the idea. You don't want to wait until you trip and fall off the stage.

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.

Ha! Easy for nuns to talk about giving up things. That's what they do for a living.

Humor is not a trick, not jokes. Humor is a presence in the world - like grace - and shines on everybody.

When you're a little kid, your heart is open and tender and a harsh word can go straight in and become part of your life.