Religion enables us to ignore nothingness and get on with the jobs of life. - John Updike

When you're retired, you get into your routines and other people, even so-called loved ones, become a strain.

The substance of fictional architecture is not bricks and mortar but evanescent consciousness. Sometimes, therefore, a door opens onto a hallway impossibly, and the placement of our heating ducts and storage space borders on the irresponsible. I have great trouble, myself, in imagining the floor plans of split-level homes, though I feel they are important sites of the American condition.

All men are boys time is trying to outsmart.