Herat, 8 December. What a day it was! God save me from any more adventures on a drained stomach.

Somebody must trespass on the taboos of modern nationalism, in the interests of human reason. Business can't. Diplomacy won't. It has to be people like us.

I have learned that the cost of everything from a royal suite to a bottle of soda water can be halved by the simple expedient of saying it must be halved.

There, carried high on a bank of clouds, hovers a shape, a triangle in the sky. This is the Holy Mountain Athos, station of a faith where all the years have stopped.

All tragedies are finished bya death, All comedies are ended bya marriage; The future states of both are left to faith.

All present life is but an interjection, An'Oh!'or 'Ah!'of joy or misery, Or a 'Ha! ha!'or 'Bah!'a yawn or 'Pooh!' Of which perhaps the latter is most true.

But after being fired at once or twice, The ear becomes more Irish, and less nice.

The mountains look on Marathon And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone, I dreamed that Greece might still be free.

Just sharing one little smile can change someone's whole world.

There is time for everything.

When people ask me what's my field? I say, on one hand, a fractalist. Perhaps the only one, the only full-time one.

I find faith in human perseverance, even as the universe throws challenge after challenge our way.

Better no marriage, than a marriage short of the best.

May is a pious fraud of the almanac.

We cracked up together, which was necessary, because she loved me again.

From serenity comes gentleness, comes lasting strength.

I mean, Rick James was just a man-made image, the image I created. Just trying to live Rick James almost killed me.

Remember - that which does not kill us can only make us stronger. And that which does kill us leaves us dead!