If you lack the iron and the fizz to take control of your own life, then the gods will repay your weakness by having a grin or two at your expense. Should you fail to pilot your own ship, don't be surprised at what inappropriate port you find yourself docked.

On the mainland, a rain was falling. The famous Seattle rain. The thin, gray rain that toadstools love. The persistent rain that knows every hidden entrance into collar and shopping bag. The quiet rain that can rust a tin roof without the tin roof making a sound in protest. The shamanic rain that feeds the imagination. The rain that seems actually a secret language, whispering, like the ecstasy of primitives, of the essence of things.

Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air - moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh - felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing.

Now that I'm in love, I haven't a clue. Now that I'm in love, I'm completely stupid on the subject.

Reality is contradictory. And it's paradoxical.

Some marriages are made in heaven, Mine was made in Hong Kong, by the same people who make those little rubber pork chops they sell in the pet department at Kmart.

The most useful thing about art is it's uselessness.