Death Came, Death Went, But Commerce Flowed

She Might Have Been Born This Way, Without An Empathy Gene And Other Essentials. In That Case, She Would Interpret Any Kindness As Weakness. Among Predatory Beasts, Any Display Of Weakness Is An Invitation To Attack.

Nothing Gives Us Courage More Readily Than The Desire To Avoid Looking Like A Damn Fool.

Appearances Are Not Reality; But They Often Can Be A Convincing Alternative To It. You Can Control Appearances Most Of The Time, But Facts Are What They Are. When The Facts Are Too Sharp, You Can Craft A Cheerful Version Of The Situation And Cover The Facts The Way That You Can Covered A Battered Old Four-slice Toaster With A Knitted Cozy Featuring Images Of Kittens.

Billy Pilgrim Had A Theory About Diaries. Women Were More Likely Than Men To Think That Their Lives Had Sufficient Meaning To Require Recording On A Daily Basis. It Was Not For The Most Part A God-is-leading-me-on-a-wondrous-journey Kind Of Meaning, But More An I've-gotta-be-me-but-nobody-cares Sentimentalism That Passed For Meaning, And They Usually Stopped Keeping A Diary By The Time They Hit Thirty, Because By Then They Didn't Want To Ponder The Meaning Of Life Anymore Because It Scared The Crap Out Of Them.

If Edgar Allan Poe Were Alive Today, His Agent Would Be Constantly Slapping Him Upside The Head With Tightly Rolled Copies Of His Brilliant Short Stories And Novelettes, Yelling, 'full-length Novels, You Moron! Pay Attention! What's The Matter With You -- Are You Shooting Heroin Or Something? Write For The Market! No More Of This Midlength 'fall Of The House Of Usher' Crap