Their imaginations were flywheels on the ramshackle machinery of the awful truth.

After the First World War, Germany was trying to build a democracy. Then when the Reichstag, the legislature, was burned down in 1933, this was seen as such an emergency that human rights had to be suspended. The attack on the World Trade Towers has allowed Bush and his gang to do anything. What are we to do now? I say when there's a code red, we should all run around like chickens with our heads cut off. I don't feel that we are in any great danger.

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.

I don't know what's going on, and I'm probably not smart enough to understand if somebody was to explain it to me. All I know is we're being tested somehow, by somebody or some thing a whole lot smarter than us, and all I can do is be friendly and keep calm and try and have a nice time till it's over.

We're a terribly lonesome society. For all I know, all societies are. You can make a few new friends, that's all. You can't change history. History is happening to us now.

It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?

Well, we are terribly divided politically, yes, and, you know, I don't mean to intimidate you and your listeners but I have a master's degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago.