The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.

Loving humanity means as much, and as little, as loving raindrops, or loving the Milky Way. You say that you love humanity? Are you sure you aren’t treating yourself to easy self-congratulation, seeking approval, making certain you’re on the right side?

Love is just a system for getting someone to call you darling after sex.

This was long before the term 'single-parent family' came into use; back then it was a 'broken home'.

You can put it another way, of course; you always can.

I was initially planning to write about grief in terms of Eurydice and the myth thereof. By that point the overall metaphor of height and depth and flat and falling and rising was coming into being in my mind.

...life is a gift bestowed without anyone asking for it; that the thinking person has a philosophical duty to examine both the nature of life and the conditions it comes with; and that if this person decides to renounce the gift no one asks for, it is the moral and human duty to act on the consequences of that decision.