If a birth is the fall-out from the explosion caused by the union of two unstable elements, then perhaps a half-life is all we can expect.

I am gagged and imprisoned. I can't even speak. I want to kick a football in a park with my son. Ordinary, banal life: my impossible dream.

History could claw upward as well as down. The powerful could be deafened by the cries of the poor.

I'm definitely post-something.

Out-of-step intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and the deceased Edward Said have often been dismissed as crazy extremists, 'anti-American,' and in Mr. Said's case even, absurdly, as apologists for Palestinian 'terrorism.'

Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull.

I'll tell you what divorce hasn't taught me. It didn't teach me not to get married again.