Doing what you wanted to do was the only training, and the only preliminary, needed for doing more of what you wanted to do.

A German wine label is one of the things life's too short for, a daunting testimony to that peculiar nation's love of detail and organization.

Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko: 'You atheist?' "Kingsley Amis: 'Well, yes, but it's more that I hate him.

Work was like cats were supposed to be: if you disliked and feared it and tried to keep out if its way, it knew at once and sought you out and jumped on your lap and climbed all over you to show how much it loved you. Please God, he thought, don't let me die in harness.

Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosophy of the slightest appositeness, no law but served the state, no history that gave an inkling of how it had been and what had happened. And no love, only egotism, infatuation and lust.

Death has this much to be said for it: You don't have to get out of bed for it. Wherever you happen to be They bring it to you—free.