Picking other people's brains is an art worth cultivating.

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Where, indeed. Many a badly stung survivor, faced with the aftermath of some relative's funeral, has ruefully concluded that the victory has been won hands down by a funeral establishment - in disastrously unequal battle.

Prison walls are meant not only to keep convicts in, but to keep the would-be investigator out.

Picking other people's brains is an art worth cultivating.

Things on the whole are faster in America; people don't stand for election, they run for office. If a person says he's sick, it doesn't mean regurgitating, it means ill. Mad means angry, not insane. Don't ask for the left-luggage; it's called a checkroom.

Society created the prison in its own image; will history, with its penchant for paradox, reverse those roles?

Gracious dying is a huge, macabre and expensive joke on the American public.