But there is much to be said for giving up ... grand ambitions and living the most ordinary life imaginable.

Free people have a serious problem with place, being in a place, using up a place, deciding which new place to rotate to. Americans ricochet around the United States like billiard balls.

Hatred strikes me as one of the few signs of life remaining in the world. This is another thing about the world which is upsidedown: all the friendly and likable people seem dead to me; only the haters seem alive.

Have you noticed that only in time of illness or disaster or death are people real?

Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to him.

It is possible, however, that the artist is both thin-skinned and prophetic and, like the canary lowered into the mine shaft to test the air, has caught a whiff of something lethal.

There is no pain on this earth like seeing the same woman look at another man the way she once looked at you.