Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

Seems like the only kind of job an American can get these days is committing suicide in some way.

The function of the artist is to make people like life better than they have before.

We used to have superb public schools. I guess we don't anymore, but, boy, the public schools were really something and I am a product of those in Indianapolis.

You realize, of course, that everything I say is horseshit.

The proper ending for any story about people it seems to me, since life is now a polymer in which the Earth is wrapped so tightly, should be the same abbreviation, which I now write large because I feel like it, which is this one: ETC.

All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.