Some of the old diseases that we think are gone - case in point, measles - are back, now that somebody has spread around, in a very wicked way, the idea that these inoculations were making children autistic. Now we're getting outbreaks that are killing children. The end result is, if you create a population that lacks immunity, and diseases are still there, you're going to get outbreaks and you're going to get death.

Women are human beings, and human beings are a very mixed lot. I've always been against the idea that women were Victorian angels, that they could do no wrong. I've always thought it was horseshit and does nobody any good. Remember, Lizzie Borden got off largely because the cultural agenda had convinced people that women were morally superior to men, so Lizzie Borden was "incapable" of taking the ax and giving her mother 40 whacks.

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.

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer, an almost physical nerve, the kind you need to walk a log across a river.

I want everything back, the way it was. But there is no point to it, this wanting.

We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability?

It's clear, it's fresh, like a mint candy.