Somebody gets into trouble, then gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it.

People are only animals, but special animals. Every animal has fought and killed to survive, even before the dinosaurs. We're the only ones that do it for fun. That's why I don't know about Darwinism. Supposedly evolution and natural selection are all about survival, but we haven't gotten smarter over the years, only more dangerous.

Some jerk infected the Internet with an outright lie. It shows how easy it is to do and how credulous people are.

But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about.

We are never as modern, as far ahead of the past as we like to think we are.

I'm mad about being old and I'm mad about being American. Apart from that, OK.

What had made me move through so many dead and pointless years was curiosity.