Life seemed to be an educator's practical joke in which you spent the first half learning and the second half learning that everything you learned in the first half was wrong.

It was dramatic to watch my grandmother decapitate a turkey with an ax the day before Thanksgiving. Nowadays the expense of hiring grandmothers for the ax work would probably qualify all turkeys so honored with gourmet status.

The best advice I can give anybody about going out into the world is this: Don't do it. I have been out there. It is a mess....

In writing, punctuation plays the role of body language. It helps readers hear you the way you want to be heard.

When you're the only pea in the pod, your parents are likely to get you confused with the Hope diamond.

The American press has the blues. Too many authorities have assured it that its days are numbered, too many good newspapers are in ruins.

Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.