You have to find hope. Hope is such a shape shifter. You tend to look in the rearview mirror for hope, but when its gone, you have to look forward. You have to get in the van and keep driving on.

It's not easy getting old, you know. Things become a lot less clear.

The jocks that used to stuff me into a locker when I was a punk rocker are my best buddies now.

But once you publish a book, doesn’t it by definition become the realm of public discourse? Otherwise, wouldn’t we just write books and print them out ourselves, and give them to specific people we felt comfortable giving them to–like gifts? Isn’t publishing sort of a social contract?

I know I've lost my mind. But I'm not concerned, because it's the first thing I've lost in a long time that actually feels good.

Fobbit is fast, razor sharp, and seven kinds of hilarious. Thank you, Mr. Abrams, for the much needed salve--it feels good to finally laugh about Iraq. Fobbit deserves a place alongside Slaughterhouse Five and Catch-22 as one of our great comic novels about the absurdity of war.

People really do change. Don't let anyone tell you differently. That the future does not conform to the past is not the exception, but the rule.