But I replied that what made being alive almost worthwhile for me, besides music, was all the saints I met, who could be anywhere. By saints I meant people who behaved decently in a strikingly indecent society.

I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that time, they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody. They may be teaching that still.

...when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist.

She was a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies.

What's the point of being alive," she said, "if you're not going to communicate?

profanity and obscenity entitle people who don't want unpleasant information to close their ears and eyes to you.

To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life.