The problem with elections is that anybody who wants an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn’t have it. And anybody who does not want an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn’t have it, either. Government office should be received like a child’s Christmas present, with surprise and delight. Instead it is usually received like a diploma, an anticlimax that never seems worth the struggle to earn it.

One bachelor is an irritation. Ten thousand bachelors are a war.

I'm putting you in Dink Meeker's toon. From now on, as far as you're concerned, Dink Meeker is God." "Then who are you?" "The personnel officer who hired God.

When I write fiction, I create characters whose views are not my own, and I allow them to be eloquent in defense of their, not my, views.

You frighten me, when you say there isn't time." "I don't see why. Christians have been expecting the imminent end of the world for millennia." "But it keeps not ending." "So far, so good.

Grief,she reminded herself, is almost always for the mourner's loss.

This is the Speaker for the Dead? Judging someone by appearances?" "Maybe I've fallen in love with Grego." "You've always been a sucker for people who pee on you.