Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from the things she found in gift shops.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning do to do afterward.

He hadn't killed nearly as many people as I had. But then again, he hadn't had my advantage, which was the full cooperation of our Government.

Everybody who is alive is a survivor, and everybody who is dead isn't,' I said.'So everybody alive must have the Survivor's Syndrome. It's that or death. I am so damn sick of people telling me proudly that they are survivors!

...We took the 10 machines we agreed were the most beguiling, and we put them on permanent exhibit in the foyer of this library underneath a sign whose words can surely be applied to this whole ruined planet nowadays: THE COMPLICATED FUTILITY OF IGNORANCE.

He was seemingly born not only with a gift for language, but with a particularly nasty clock which makes him go crazy every three years or so.