We're all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

I don't want realism. I want magic!

The scene is memory and is therefore nonrealistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.

And funerals are pretty compared to deaths.

The Venus flytrap, a devouring organism, aptly named for the goddess of love.

Being disappointed is one thing and being discouraged is something else. I am disappointed but I am not discouraged.

Oh, I haven't reached any peak. I hit the bottom in the '60s. When a certain actress undertook the leading role in a recent play of mine, she referred to me as "that old derelict." Not to my face, but behind my back.