He was dazed, the soft thoughts sinking slowly in. A son. Even a daughter. His child. Immortality. A chance to make good. Pass on the hard lessons learned.

Jack and Jill slept, wrapped in each other's arms, untroubled by any dream in their cocoon of freshly discovered wrinkly passion.

The sun was up - stuck like half a tinned apricot on a sky awash with all the colours of a fading bruise. Down below the living dead were forming their complaining queues at bus stops.

Thought, if I may put it, is the man behind the possession, appearance, things we like, things we hate and the very epitome of life.

In life, be a kid in a candy store.

That competition and the struggle for existence is the mechanism behind this state of perpetual change.

Men would be angels angels would be gods.

My life had made me funny, and cancer wasn't going to change that.

Nobody else cares about you at the beginning of your career except you-and, of course, your mother. Your mother is there because that is what mothers do.

This planet is 15 million years overdue for an asteroid strike like the one that killed the dinosaurs.

Without God upholding the universe from moment to moment, nothing could continue to be.

The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.