Now, as an adult, I appreciate those memories. Mom taught me the importance of compassion for your waitress, your crossing guard, your mailman.

I don't think God's through with me. I really believe he thinks there's still some good things I can do.

I try not to question the good things.

Life is worth living to reveal the beauties of life.

Marriage is a game. They (the anxious and powerful) set the rules. We (the ordinary and subversive) bow obediently before those rules. And then we go home and do whatever the hell we want anyhow.

Will 2015 ever be noted as the year Ebola was decisively downgraded from a lurid horror meme to just one of many commonly treatable diseases?

There's nothing people like better than being asked an easy question. For some reason, we're flattered when a stranger asks us where Maple Street is in our hometown and we can tell him.

The baseball establishment is permissive about revelry.

I'm a horrible karaoke singer.

No reporter is flying around in borrowed twin-engine airplanes.

Supergroupies don't have to hang around hotel corridors. When you are one, as I have been, you get invited backstage.

We have no control over fate and history, but we can control how we conduct ourselves in this life.

So many good songs get written fast, because you know exactly what has to work.