There is a common emotion we all recognize and have not yet named -- the happy anticipation of being able to feel contempt.

The very air had screams smeared on it. He flinched from the noise in this silent room.

We routinely leave our small children in day care among strangers. At the same time, in our guilt we evince paranoia about strangers and foster fear in children.

I collect church collapses, recreationally. Did you see the recent one in Sicily? Marvelous! The facade fell on sixty-five grandmothers at a special mass. Was that evil? If so, who did it? If he's up there, he just loves it, Officer Starling. Typhoid and swans - it all comes from the same place.

We rarely get to prepare ourselves in meadows or on graveled walks; we do it on short notice in places without windows, hospital corridors, rooms like this lounge with its cracked plastic sofa and Cinzano ashtrays, where the cafe curtains cover blank concrete. In rooms like this, with so little time, we prepare our gestures, get them by heart so we can do them when we're frightened in the face of Doom.

It's hard to have anything isn't it? Rare to get it, hard to keep it. This is a damn slippery planet.

The most stable elements, Clarice, appear in the middle of the periodic table, roughly between iron and silver. Between iron and silver. I think that is appropriate for you.