The odds on any intelligent person having an unhappy childhood are better than fair, and the odds on a sad ending are practically off the board. - Wilfrid Sheed

Happy the man with a book-length grievance — and rare. Each of these books contains one possible magazine article surrounded by more padding than an offensive lineman: every little indignity that ever happened to them, and every two-bit feud, magnified to a Horrible Example to justify a larger printing.

Mankind has always made too much of its saints and heroes, and how the latter handle the fuss might be called their final test.

What he feared most was the blind spot between us and the future, the space between identities where we could get lost forever.