profanity and obscenity entitle people who don't want unpleasant information to close their ears and eyes to you.

You were sick, but now you're well again, and there's work to do.

In the water I am beautiful.

Jokes have to be quite naked to be understood. They have to be quite simple.

there i was in late middle age, cut loose in a thoroughly looted, bankrupt nation whose assets had been sold off to foreigners, a nation swamped by unchecked plagues and superstition and illiteracy and hypnotic tv, with virtually no health services for the poor. where to go? what to do?

If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.

Every writer has to write his speech.