There was a still life on Billy's bedside table-two pills, an ashtray with three lipstick-stained cigarettes in it, one cigarette still burning, and a glass of water. The water was dead. So it goes. Air was trying to get out of the dead water. Bubbles were clinging to the walls of the glass, too weak to climb out.

What passes for culture in my head is really a bunch of commercials.

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

How complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.

Our government's got a war on drugs. That's certainly better than no drugs at all.

I have wanted to give Iraq a lesson in democracy - because we're experienced with it, you know. And, in democracy, after a hundred years, you have to let your slaves go. And, after a hundred and fifty years, you have to let your women vote. And, at the beginning of democracy, is that quite a bit of genocide and ethnic cleansing is quite okay. And that's what's going on now.

The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal.