We are prepared for insults, but compliments leave us baffled.

Flattery and insults raise the same question: What do you want?

Eternity eludes us, even as a thought.

Compassion brings us to a stop, and for a moment we rise above ourselves.

Expensive advertising courts us with hints and images. The ordinary kind merely says, Buy.

If beggars do not hate the rest of us, they are even more abject than I had imagined.