I found myself thinking about President William McKinley, the third American president to be assassinated. He lived for several days after he was shot, and towards the end, his wife started crying and screaming, "I want to go too! I want to go too!" And with his last measure of strength, McKinley turned to her and spoke his last words: "We are all going.

I had a moral opposition to eating before dawn on the grounds that I was not a nineteenth-century Russian peasant fortifying myself for a day in the fields.

The sky is like a monochromatic contemporay painting, drawing me in its illusion of depth, pulling me up.

The truth hurts because it's real. It hurts because it mattered. And that's an important thing to acknowledge to yourself.

She raised one leg and gave me all her weight as a I dipped her. She either trusted me or wanted to fall.

Like many people, I feel like celebrating. Remember this feeling. It is human, and can help us understand when others express bloodlust.

In retrospect Hank I don't know why I spent four years writing this book when I could have just made a hit sing-a-ma-jig album.