I look eight years older than everybody.

Like most people of my generation, I fell in love with the philosophy of existentialism.

Not just the celibacy thing but because he has God’s ear, a line on the mysteries. That’s impressive to girls.

Even the sky a hybrid – here clean and black and starred, there roiling with a brusque signature of cloud or piled in strata like folded linen or the interior of rock.

It’s like everything else. The price of Torahs is higher in Alaska.

I do not do schtick. What I do are organized routines and connected schtick – schtick upon schtick upon schtick until we have a piece of carpentry.

It’s fine, precise, detailed work, the infinitely small motor management of diamond cutters and safecrackers that we do in our heads.

But it’s hard to talk about art. Maybe there should be a law against it, some First Amendment gag order like crying fire in a crowded theater.

I say “every so often” but it’s more frequent than that.

The peculiar dignity of men seen eating alone in restaurants on national holidays.