Jailbird: A Novel

He had so opened himself to the consolations of religion that he had become an imbecile.

I am now moved to suppose, with my primitive understanding of economics, that every successful government is of necessity a Ponzi scheme.

How would I ever have got through life without women to act as my interpreters?

"I don't think anybody understands what's really going on." "Some people must," I said. I no longer believe that.

"Dear Lord—never put me in the charge of a frightened human being."

The most embarrassing thing to me about this autobiography, surely, is its unbroken chain of proofs that I was never a serious man. I have been in a lot of trouble over the years, but that was all accidental. Never have I risked my life, or even my comfort, in the service of mankind. Shame on me.

We are here for no purpose, unless we can invent one. Of that I am sure. The human condition in an exploding universe would not have been altered one iota if, rather than live as I have, I had done nothing but carry a rubber ice-cream cone from closet to closet for sixty years.