I think we fought Vietnam for the benefits of civilization, and certainly we fought it to oppose authority. To show our authority, to show we weren't weak. Isn't that what Nixon kept saying? "We have to show the world that we're not weak." So of course what we ended up showing the world was that we were, yep, weak. 'Cause we couldn't beat these kids in black pajamas.

The quickest way to learn about a new place is to know what it dreams of.

The family exists for many reasons, but its most basic function may be to draw together after a member dies.

because the hardest boss a man can ever have is himself.

Waiting rooms were made for books-of course! But so are theater lobbies before the show, long and boring checkout lines, and everyone's favorite, the john.

Sometimes a cigar is just a smoke and a story's just a story

For a moment everything was clear, and when that happens you see that the world is barely there at all. Don't we all secretly know this? It's a perfectly balanced mechanism of shouts and echoes pretending to be wheels and cogs, a dreamclock chiming beneath a mystery-glass we call life. Behind it? Below it and around it? Chaos, storms. Men with hammers, men with knives, men with guns. Women who twist what they cannot dominate and belittle what they cannot understand. A universe of horror and loss surrounding a single lighted stage where mortals dance in defiance of the dark.