He was one of those quite rare adults who communicate with small children fairly well and who love them all impartially--not in a sugary way but in a businesslike fashion that may sometimes entail a hug, in the same way that closing a big business deal may call for a handshake.

My wife says, and I agree with her, that what would be really great for Maine would be to legalize dope completely and set up dope stores the way that there are state-run liquor stores. You could get your Acapulco gold or your whatever it happened to be - your Augusta gold or your Bangor gold. And people would come from all the other states to buy it, and there could be a state tax on it. Then everybody in Maine could have a Cadillac.

The crazy people of the world...shouldn't get to win. If God won't make it better after they do have their shitty little victories, then ordinary people have to. They have to try, at least.

There is a relationship between humor and fear. Think of all the gags you ever heard that have to do with dismemberment, or something that's horrible in one way or another, even if it's just horrible in the sense that somebody's being embarrassed. What do kids laugh at? Kids laugh if your fly's down. That's hilarious. But for the kid whose fly is down, it's a horrible situation.

The kids accepted my drinking as a part of life. Not a particularly pernicious part. I didn't beat up on them. Basically I don't think I was so different from a lot of dads who have three or four martinis when they get in from work, wine with dinner and so on.

I don't want to go to the heaven that I learned about when I was a kid. To me, it seems boring.

And if there are no cars or planes, and if no one’s Uncle John is out in the wood lot west of town banging away at a quail or pheasant; if the only sound is the slow beat of your own heart, you can hear another sound, and that is the sound of life winding down to its cyclic close, waiting for the first winter snow to perform last rites.