What war has always been is a puberty ceremony. It's a very rough one, but you went away a boy and came back a man, maybe with an eye missing or whatever but godammit you were a man and people had to call you a man thereafter.

And I apologize to all of you who are the same age as my grandchildren. And many of you reading this are the same age as my grandchildren. They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our Baby Boomer corporations and government.

God Almighty Himself must have been hilarious when human beings so mingled iron and water and fire as to make a railroad train!

I am beguiled by your physical beauty, and I am moved by how head-over-heels in love with books you are. And nowhere else have I found such thoughtful and literate reportage on the state of the American soul, as that soul makes itself known in the books we write.

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

God damn it, you've got to be kind.

She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for almost all mankind.