Innocence ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, you know. Innocent little kids rip the wings off flies, because they don’t know any better. That’s innocence

You think you know someone. But mostly you just know what you want to know.

What a blessed if painful thing, this business of being alive.

Who knows what may lie around the next corner? There may be a window somewhere ahead. It may look out on a field of sunflowers.

Longhaired preachers come out every night, Tryin' to tell us what's wrong and what's right. But when asked about something to eat, They will tell you in voices so sweet. You will eat (You will eat!) By and by, (By and by!) In that glorious land in the sky. (Way up high!) Work and pray, live on hay, You'll get pie in the sky when you die. (That's a lie!)

I see God now as an unimaginative writer of popular fictions, someone who builds stories around sadistic and graceless plots, narratives that exist only to express His terror of a woman's power to choose who and how to love, to redefine love as she sees fit, not as God thinks it ought to be. The author is unworthy of His own characters.

That was one thing you found out when you were stoned, or wasted, or feverish: that the world was always turning and that only a healthy mind could block out the sickening whirl of it.