My ancestors came over from Germany about the time of the Civil War and one of them lost a leg and went back to Germany.

We are what we imagine ourselves to be.

Like all real heroes, Charley had a fatal flaw. He refused to believe that he had gonorrhea, whereas the truth was that he did.

If I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, 'Kurt is up in heaven now.' That's my favorite joke.

And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.

What is flirtatiousness but an argument that life must go on and on and on?

If a person survives an ordinary span of sixty years or more, there is every chance that his or her life as a shapely story has ended and all that remains to be experienced is epilogue. Life is not over, but the story is.