Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert our existence, like dogs peeing on fire hydrants. We put on display our framed photographs, our parchment diplomas, our silver-plated cups; we monogram our linen, we carve our names on trees, we scrawl them on washroom walls. It's all the same impulse. What do we hope from it? Applause, envy, respect? Or simply attention, of any kind we can get? At the very least we want a witness. We can't stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio running down.

I'll make you mine, lovers said in old books. They never said, I'll make you me.

An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.

A word after a word after a word is power.

I am nervous about dogmas of any kind, whether they be religious, political, or anti-religious. Too many heads have rolled because of them.

Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.

If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia.