Twenty things I've learned since I turned 50.

1. Anyone who can look into their children’s eyes and tell them that nothing matters because eventually the sun will explode and the world will spin to dust is a perfect monster.

2. Every society has its madnesses. We laugh at the Elizabethans who fought duels over poems yet we think nothing of the riot after our football team won the championship.

3. Well, the world will end someday. There are two responses to this. One is to hide in one’s house watching television until that blessed day. The other is to go forth and live in the reality of today blissfully unheeding of the shadow of destruction which crowds everything.

4. Most women understand men. They pretend not to, I think, because it amuses them to watch men believe that there are affairs of the heart which are not predetermined by a woman’s wishes.

5. As for myself, I can’t explain why I have the decided inability to flirt with women beyond waitresses, shop clerks, and others who pose no threat to my solitude.

6. I suppose it is a comfort to believe there is no God. Like children, we don’t want to know that there are consequences for our foolishness.

7. Disinterest in a beautiful woman turns her into a statute for me. I love to look at statues but yet have to conceive any desire for one.

8. The old thought that one does not possess things so much as things possess one has become more and more poignant to me lately. I am considering jettisoning most of what I own in rebellion of society’s need for me to be a consumer.

9. A good policeman needs to know how to lie just like a good lawyer needs occasionally to know how to tell the truth.

10. We domesticated dogs because we wanted to feel superior to another living being who lived in our house. Those who own a dog know how miserably we failed in this.

11. Cats, on the other hands are freelancers who deign to take our food and live in our house. They consider the litter box an infringement on their dignity but tolerate it so long as we, their willing servants, scratch them behind the ears.


12. Good rock and roll has a bit of the barroom and a bit of the church in it.

13. I don’t think I’ve ever impressed a woman, but I have amused a few.


14. The only thing dancing and singing have in common is that it is excruciating to observe someone with no talent attempt either one.

15. I don’t believe God is a vengeful being. But he does have a wicked sense of humor.


16. People hate most those vices which they fear they most possess.

17. Every accusation is a mirror.


18. Whenever things are going my way, I always look for the semi coming up behind me in my rear view mirror.

19. It is true that chaos can also invite opportunity. But more often it invites more chaos.


20. People who use quotations are lazy. Except those who use mine, who tend to be erudite persons who can recognize wisdom when they hear it.