I've always believed in God. I also think that's the sort of thing that either comes as part of the equipment, the capacity to believe, or at some point in your life, when you're in a position where you actually need help from a power greater than yourself, you simply make an agreement.

Flip-flop, hippety-hop, offa your rocker and over the top, life's a fiction and the world's a lie, so put on some Creedence and let's get high.

If something is accessible to a lot of people, it's got to be dumb because most people are dumb.

I know I can do it," Todd Downey said, helping himself to another ear of corn from the steaming bowl. "I'm sure that in time her death will be a mystery, even to me.

For some reason California's always been where the struggle is about how much authority you can impose on people's private lives. It seems to show up there most clearly. They had a helmet law for motorcycles in California and the bikies were saying things like, "It restricts my vision. I can't hear what my bike's doing. If it was on fire I wouldn't know it until my ass caught." And at the bottom line what the bikies were saying was, "Look, it's my goddamn head and if I want to splatter my brains all over the guardrails on the Coast Highway, super for me."

The quiet, singing voice of the rose. The song that promised all might be well, all might be well, that all manner of things might be well.

People can be stunningly unobservant.