To have a child is to be impaled daily on the spike of responsibility. - Steve Toltz

When people think your days are numbered, they're really very nice to you. It's only when you're trying to get on in the world that they bring their claws out.

That's the problem with people who suffer right in your face. They can't so much as scratch their noses without its being poignant.

I remember her dragging me once to a rally where the speaker said the media barons were in the pocket of the government, and then a month later to another rally where this speaker said the government was in the pockets of the media barons (she agreed with both), and I remember trying to explain to her that it only looks like they are, because by coincidence the government and the newspapers just happen to have the exact same agenda: to scare the shit out of people and then keep them in constant freezing terror. She didn't care. She decreed her everlasting hatred for both groups, and nothing could persuade her otherwise.