Books are for those without real lives, he thought. And they are no real replacement.

Few people sufficiently appreciate the colossal task of feeding a world of billions of omnivores who demand meat with their potatoes.

The images of his infinite pasts and infinite futures washed over him as he waited, paralyzed, in the present.

Hunting will never feed lots of people; it will always be a hobby.

I flipped back through the pad of paper while I thought about what Stephen Hawking would do next.

None of the ways people were talking about September 11 felt right to me. I don't buy into the way George W. Bush talks about it. I don't buy into the way the 9/11 commission talks about it. It isn't that I don't believe them. It's just that they're not the tellings for me.

Even if I don't like what I am, I know what I am. My children like what they are, but they don't know what they are. So tell me which is worse.