What a moron I was to think you were sweet and innocent, when it turns out you were actually college-educated the whole time!

He needed to exist only in the present, without guilt, without expectation.

Glenn used to say the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, 'I'll be dead,' you've said the word I, and so you're still alive inside the sentence. And that's how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul - it was a consequence of grammar.

I have always known that there were spellbinding evil parts for women. For one thing, I was taken at an early age to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Never mind the Protestant work ethic of the dwarfs. Never mind the tedious housework-is-virtuous motif. Never mind the fact that Snow White is a vampire -- anyone who lies in a glass coffin without decaying and then comes to life again must be. The truth is that I was paralysed by the scene in which the evil queen drinks the magic potion and changes her shape. What power, what untold possibilities!

We pulled the seeds out and scattered them on their flossy parachutes, leaving only the leathery brownish yellow tongue, soft as the inside of an elbow.

Before the Civil War, Canada was at the top of the underground railroad. If you made it into Canada, you were safe unless someone came and hauled you back. That was also true during the Vietnam War for draft resisters.

You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality. Try it and see.