It is fitting that yesteryear's swashbuckling newspaper reporter has turned into today's solemn young sobersides nursing a glass of watered white wine after a day of toiling over computer databases in a smoke-free, noise-free newsroom.

Etiquette is the grease that makes it possible for all of us to rub together without unnecessary overheating.

I gave up on new poetry myself 30 years ago when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens in a hostile world.

The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately defeat him.

What the New Yorker calls home would seem like a couple of closets to most Americans, yet he manages not only to live there but also to grow trees and cockroaches right on the premises.

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

Happiness is a small and unworthy goal for something as big and fancy as a whole lifetime, and should be taken in small doses.