Teaching, may I say, is the noblest profession of all in a democracy.

Or they'll talk about fear, which we used to call politics- job politics, social politics, government politics.

Kurt Vonnegut speaking to John Irving while Irving was administering the Heimlich maneuver in response to Vonnegut's uncontrollable coughing..."John,stop- I am not choking. I have emphysema.

It is never a mistake to say good-bye.

Fathers are always so proud the first time they see their sons in uniform," she said. "I know Big John Karpinski was," I said. He is my neighbor to the north, of course. Big John's son Little John did badly in high school, and the police caught him selling dope. So he joined the Army while the Vietnam War was going on. And the first time he came home in uniform, I never saw Big John so happy, because it looked to him as though Little John was all straightened out and would amount to something. But then Little John came home in a body bag.

Smoking is the only honorable form of suicide.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.