If there's anything I hate it's the word humorist-I feel like countering with the word seriousist.

We must love one another, yes, yes, that's all true enough, but nothing says we have to like each other. It may be the very recognition of all men as our brothers that accounts for the sibling rivalry, and even enmity, we have toward so many of them.

The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.

If there's anything I hate it's the word humorist-I feel like countering with the word seriousist.

Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us.

I can still hear my mother wailing over some new kitchen crisis, "Oh God," and my father answering cozily from the silo, "Were you calling me, dear?

What baffles me is the comfort people find in the idea that somebody dealt this mess. Blind and meaningless chance seems to me so much more congenial - or at least less horrible. Prove to me that there is a God and I will really begin to despair.