When I was a little kid, of course, I was brown all summer. That's because I was free as a bird- nothing to do but catch bugs all day.

A dog will make eye contact. A cat will, too, but a cat's eyes don't even look entirely warm-blooded to me, whereas a dog's eyes look human except less guarded. A dog will look at you as if to say, "What do you want me to do for you? I'll do anything for you." Whether a dog can in fact, do anything for you if you don't have sheep (I never have) is another matter. The dog is willing.

Think about scary movies: There's a fine line between horror and humor.

When I weed, I like to get off into my own head. For one thing, my wife plants and I have trouble telling which plants are weeds and which are my favorite plants. So I tend to hop around and grab the weeds that I know are weeds. So I don't weed all that linearly. I tend to weed haphazardly.

Many a person has been saved from summer alcoholism, not to mention hypertoxicity, by Dostoyevsky.

Mozart combined high formality and playfulness that delights as no other composition in any other medium does.

Anyone who undertakes the literary grind had better like playing around with words.