All these years, I've been opening the window and making love to the world.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

The thing my father was proudest of was the Ayres clock at the intersection of Washington Street and Meridian. That made him so happy. Ayres complained because he wouldn't send them a bill. There was stuff my family had done there - particularly my father and grandfather - that was quite permanent and wonderful.

His mother understood my illness immediately, that it was my world rather than myself that was diseased.

Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery.

The prostitutes worked for a pimp now. He was splendid and cruel. He was a god to them. He took their free will away from them, which was perfectly all right. They didn't want it anyway. It was as though they had surrendered themselves to Jesus, for instance, so they could live unselfishly and trustingly-except that they had surrendered to a pimp instead.

The primary benefit of practicing any art, whether well or badly, is that it enables one's soul to grow.