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.

Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.

I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone. I get drunk, and I drive my wife away with a breath like mustard gas and roses. And then, speaking gravely and elegantly into the telephone, I ask the telephone operators to connect me with this friend or that one, from whom I have not heard in years.

I wish you'd help me look into a more interesting problem - namely, my sanity.

The most important message of a crucifix, to me anyway, was how unspeakably cruel supposedly sane human beings can be when under orders from a superior authority.

In 1844, Karl Marx said, "Religion is the opiate of the masses." He said this at a time when opium and opium derivatives were the only painkillers. And he said it helped a little. He might as well have said, "Religion is the aspirin of the people."

Trout was petrified there on Forty-second Street. It had given him a life not worth living, but I had also given him an iron will to live. This was a common combination on the planet Earth.