Six months of looking for a job had made me an expert at picking out the people who, like me, were hurrying up to wait - in somebody's outer anything for a chance to make it through their inner doors to prove that you could type two words a minute, or not drool on your blouse while answering difficult questions about your middle initial and date of birth.

In a contest between new technology and old ways of life, it is the traditional rhythms that will hold. Traditional societies make up more than two-thirds of the world, the two-thirds that will not be going online to "save" time but will remain wedded to the knowledge that if the bus doesn't come that day, it will come someday. After all, there is nothing but time.

Words themselves are innocuous; it is the consensus that gives them true power.

Contempt mates well with pity.

That's one of the privileges of old age - you can give plenty of advice 'cause most folks think that's all you got left anyway.

The right woman is the one you can live with, not the one in your head.

Life is accepting what is and working from that.