The last good time always comes.

When an imaginative person gets into mental trouble, the line between seeming and being has a way of disappearing-.

You laugh because what's fearful and unknown is also what's funny, you laugh the way a small child will sometimes laugh and cry at the same time when a capering circus clown approaches, knowing it is supposed to be funny... But it is also unknown, full of the unknown's eternal power.

The narrator, a time traveler from 2011, scoffs at the despondency caused by the Cuban Missile Crisis -- especially the drug and alcohol use of a resident of 1962 he supposedly cares about. Then he finds his compassion because he remembers he is the exception in being able to see beyond the immediate -- and foreboding -- horizon.

Everyone— black as well as white— thinks it's going to be better over the next jump of land.

Story is honorable and trustworthy; plot is shifty, and best kept under house arrest.