I had to calm down because a state trooper pulled up alongside me at a traffic light and began looking at me with that sort of casual disdain you often get when you give a dangerously stupid person a gun and a squad car.

My father liked Iowa. He lived his whole life in the state, and is even now working his way through eternity there, in Glendale Cemetery in Des Moines.

I assume he was descended from apes like all the rest of us, but clearly in his case it had been a fairly gentle slope.

When you come from Des Moines you either accept the fact without question and settle down with a girl called Bobbie and get a job in the Firestone factory and …

I'm not scared of dying And I, don't really care If it' s peace you find in dying Well then, let the time be near.

Next time... we will laugh more, we'll love more; we just won't be so afraid.

I have no fear nor shrinking; I have seen death so often that it is not strange or fearful to me.