After everything that's happened, how can the world still be so beautiful? Because it is.

In his student days, he used to argue that if a woman has no other course open to her but starvation, prostitution, or throwing herself from a bridge, then surely the prostitute, who has shown the most tenacious instinct for self-preservation, should be considered stronger and saner than her frailer and no longer living sisters. One couldn't have it both ways, he'd pointed out: if women are seduced and abandoned they're supposed to go mad, but if they survive, and seduce in their turn, then they were mad to begin with.

The astrologers would tell that the U.S. is ruled by fire and Canada is ruled by water. Short version: You pep us up, we cool you down.

Neither of us says the word love, not once. It would be tempting fate; it would be romance, bad luck.

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

It used to be that your bloodlines dictated who you were. But the U.S. became the land of the self-made man, in which not only did you make a fortune but you could make up everything else about yourself as well. You move into a new town with a spurious pedigreed background and you just make yourself up.

More and more I feel like a letter—deposited here, collected there. But a letter addressed to no one.