I let it ring. I wanted to breathe for a few minutes, and I could think of nothing that couldn't wait. Besides, I had paid almost $50 for an answering machine. Let it earn its keep.

Dying makes everyone weaker, subject to painful insight, and not always insight into any kind of special truth - it's just the approaching end that makes people want to believe they are seeing something in the line of a great revelation.

And what did you do last night, Dexter? Oh, I played with my dolls while a friend chopped up my sister.

For my part, my interest in Paris had faded away completely long ago when I learned that it was in France.

It was such an unexpected and genuine smile that if I only had a soul I'm sure I would have felt quite guilty.

Happily for me, ninety-nine percent of all human life is spent simply repeating the same old actions, speaking the same tired clichés, moving like a zombie through the same steps of the dance we plodded through yesterday and the day before and the day before. It seems horribly dull and pointless-but it really makes a great deal of sense. After all, if you only have to follow the same path every day, you don't need to think at all. Considering how good humans are at any mental process more complicated than chewing, isn't that the best for everybody?

It's always me, isn't it? I'm not really a very nice person, but for some reason it's always me that they come to with their problems.