You are being suffocated by tradition... Why don't you say, 'I am going to build a life for myself, for my time, and make it a work of art'? Your life isn't a work of art ---it's a thirdhand Victorian whatnot shelf, complete with someone else's collection of seashells and hand-carved elephants.

Those who live by electronics die by electronics. Sic semper tyrannis.

Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind.

What I would really like to have been, given a perfect world, is a jazz pianist. I mean jazz. I don't mean rock and roll. I mean the never-the-same-twice music the American black people gave the world.

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

If somebody says, "I love you," to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol-holder requires? "I love you, too."

Earthlings are the great explainers, explaining why this event is structured as it is, telling how other events may be achieved or avoided.