“The flush toilet, more than any single invention, has 'civilized' us in a way that religion and law could never accomplish.”

“I'm more interested in the meaning of funerals and the mourning that people do. It's not a retail experience. It's an existential one.”

“But poetry is a way of language, it is not its subject or its maker's background or interests or hobbies or fixations. It is nearer to utterance than history.”

“The world's supply of heartache is secure. There's love and hate and mayhem everywhere.”

“The flush toilet, more than any single invention, has 'civilized' us in a way that religion and law could never accomplish.”

“The realization that God could be female required the consideration that the Devil could be also.”

“Once she even successfully argued on behalf of my older brother, Dan, getting a BBGun, a weapon which he promptly turned against his younger siblings, outfitting us in helmet and leather jacket and instructing us to run across Eaton Park while he practiced his marksmanship. Today he is a colonel in the army and the rest of us are gun-shy.”