The Leading Cause Of Death Is Birth.

It Is No Accident That Banks Resemble Temples, Preferably Greek, And That The Supplicants Who Come To Perform The Rites Of Deposit And Withdrawal Instinctively Lower Their Voices Into The Registers Of Awe. Even The Most Junior Tellers Acquire Within Weeks Of Their Employment The Officiousness Of Hierophants Tending An Eternal Flame.

Unlike Any Other Business In The United States, Sports Must Preserve An Illusion Of Perfect Innocence. The Mounting Of This Illusion Defines The Purpose And Accounts For The Immense Wealth Of American Sports. It Is The Ceremony Of Innocence That The Fans Pay To See - Not The Game Or The Match Or The Bout, But The Ritual Portrayal Of A World In Which Time Stops And All Hope Remains Plausible, In Which Everybody Present Can Recover The Blameless Expectations Of A Child, Where The Forces Of Light Always Triumph Over The Powers Of Darkness.

Love Of Country Follows From The Exercise Of Its Freedoms, Not From Pride In Its Fleets Or Its Armies.

To The United States The Third World Often Takes The Form Of A Black Woman Who Has Been Made Pregnant In A Moment Of Passion And Who Shows Up One Day In The Reception Room On The Forty-ninth Floor Threatening To Make A Scene. The Lawyers Pay The Woman Off; Sometimes Uniformed Guards Accompany Her To The Elevators.

Let The Corporations Do As They Please -- Pillage The Environment, Falsify Their Advertising, Rig The Securities Markets -- And It Is None Of The Federal Government's Business To Interfere With The Will Of Heaven.