How’s the patient?” asked Derby. “Dead to the world.” “But not actually dead.” “No.” “How nice - to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

there i was in late middle age, cut loose in a thoroughly looted, bankrupt nation whose assets had been sold off to foreigners, a nation swamped by unchecked plagues and superstition and illiteracy and hypnotic tv, with virtually no health services for the poor. where to go? what to do?

Some jerk infected the Internet with an outright lie. It shows how easy it is to do and how credulous people are.

Rabo Karabekian: I'm in the middle of a sentence. Circe Berman: Who isn't?.

There is a strong feeling in the Middle West that the artist is not pulling his own weight no matter how hard he may work, that the other people are doing the real stuff.

Sometimes I wonder about the Creator of the Universe.

How embarrassing it is to be human.