Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer.

Oh, a lion hunter in the jungle dark, And a sleeping drunkard up in central park, and a Chinese dentist and a British queen All fit together in the same machine. Nice, nice, such very different people in the same device!

Unfortunately, that still leaves plenty of Americans who don't read much or think much -- who will still be extremely useful in unjust wars. We are sick about that. We did the best we could.

I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.

We are America's Great Lakes people, her freshwater people, not an oceanic but a continental people. Whenever I swim in an ocean, I feel as though I am swimming in chicken soup.

Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?

People would be surprised if they knew how much in this world was due to prayers.