This lunge at moral fastidiousness was something she'd noticed a lot in people around here. They were not good people. They were not kind. But they recycled their newspapers!

Humor comes from the surprise release of some buried tension.

A funny line can never exist on its own. It needs to be surrounded by mood and circumstances.

The affectionate farce I make of him ignores the ways I feel his lack of love for me. But we are managing.

As the most recently arrived to earthly life, children can seem in lingering possession of some heavenly lidless eye.

I've accrued a kind of patience, I believe, loosely like change.

The thing to remember about love affairs," says Simone, "is that they are all like having raccoons in your chimney." ... We have raccoons sometimes in our chimney," explains Simone. And once we tried to smoke them out. We lit a fire, knowing they were there, but we hoped the smoke would cause them to scurry out the top and never come back. Instead, they caught on fire and came crashing down into our living room, all charred and in flames and running madly around until they dropped dead." Simone swallows some wine. "Love affairs are like that," she says. "They are all like that.