The goal of this generation's pioneers should be to restrict procreation and limit consumption. They should also take every opportunity to make themselves happy, realizing that the key to self-generated happiness (the only reliable kind) is the refusal to take oneself too seriously.

The human race has always defined itself through narration. That isn't going to change just because we've gone electronic. What is changing is that now we're allowing corporations to tell our stories for us.

At birth, we emerge from dream soup. At death, we sink back into dream soup. In between soups, there is a crossing of dry land. Life is a portage.

To one degree or another, everybody is connected to the Mystery, and everybody secretly yearns to expand the connection. That requires expanding the soul. These things can enlarge the soul: laughter, danger, imagination, meditation, wild nature, passion, compassion, psychedelics, beauty, iconoclasm, and driving around in the rain with the top down. These things can diminish it: fear, bitterness, blandness, trendiness, egotism, violence, corruption, ignorance, grasping, shining, and eating ketchup on cottage cheese.

There's probably no subject with quite so many conflictin' opinions about it as there are about food, and 'tis better to swap bubble gum with a rabid bulldog than challenge a single one o' the varyin' beliefs your average human holds about nutrition.

If little else, the brain is an educational toy.

The winter passed as slowly and peacefully as a boa constrictor digesting a valium addict.