It's one of the reasons I became a writer, to be able to smoke in peace.

For nearly a century the psychoanalysts have been writing op-ed pieces about the workings of a country they've never traveled to, a place that, like China, has been off-limits. Suddenly, the country has opened its borders and is crawling with foreign correspondents, neurobiologists are filing ten stories a week, filled with new data. These two groups of writers, however, don't seem to read each other's work. That's because the analysts are writing about a country they call Mind and the neuroscientists are reporting from a country they call Brain.

You could also "request" to be locked into the seclusion room. Not many people made that request. You had to "request" to get out too. A nurse would look through the chicken wire and decide if you were ready to come out. Somewhat like looking at a cake through the glass of the oven door.

It was a spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of warm earth. Suicide weather.

My family had a lot of characteristics - achievements, ambitions, talents, expectations - that all seemed to be recessive in me.

What is it about meter and cadence and rhythm that makes their makers mad?

A thought is a hard thing to control.