I have never even idly thought for a single passing second that it might make my life nicer to have a small rude incontinent person follow me around screaming and making me buy them stuff for the rest of my life.

My feeling toward Republicans is like my feeling about sharks: of course they're stupid and vicious. It's in their nature to be mindless, ravening killing machines. It's nothing personal. They don't know any better. Pretty much the only thing you can do about them is stay out of their waters and, if you're unlucky enough to meet with one, shoot it through its rudimentary brain with a spear gun.

It's one of the maddening perversities of human psychology that we only notice we're alive when we're reminded we're going to die, the same way some of us appreciate our girlfriends only after they've become exes.

The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That's why we have to destroy the present politico-economy system.

Biblical, Talmudic, or Koranic literalists remind me of children wrinkling their noses at Belon oysters and asking for more Chef Boy-E-Dee. They want the world to be as simple as they are.

What dooms our best efforts to cultivate empathy and compassion is always, of course, other people.