Life is a self-paced suicide.

Historians will speak of us in the past tense.

We were once young and fresh, but now we are old and we smell.

It’s better to shoot the wrong man than not to shoot at all.

Change is absolutely necessary for growth and for buying cigaretts.

Sex without guilt: what’s the use?

You don’t find feathers in the middle of the bird.

I only know what time it is when I don’t have to tell somebody else.

Good digestion is the blessing of the philosopher of the stomach.

Near the end of our lives time becomes a gas and we watch and feel it dissolve.

On the interstate highway of letters, I am roadkill; in the Mexican party of life, I’m the piñata. Failure is not as easy as it seems.

Consider the sincerity of incompetence.

Our lives are perfect spheres, and we roll from room to room.

Some of our colleagues have been incarcerated, others have not. The point is moot: we all do time.

The severest vice is a clear conscience: to overcome a vice is to murder a virtue.

Education does not help the mind much, but neither does anything else.

The only thing that gets us through the waking hours is the sleeping hours.

Sometimes a hangnail can make all the difference.

How can one enjoy oneself without offending one’s self?

Psycho-sexual responses necessarily lead to cannibalism, but just try to tell that to young people.

The Winnebago of our culture is parked in a tow-away zone.

There are oil slicks in the harbor, but that is preferable to periscopes.

Armageddon: If you don’t survive, so what. If you do, think of the smooth commute.

We can’t help thinking we have forgotten something: the tragedy is we have not.

You can’t steer a train.

To create a system is to destroy a system: destruction is the employment of the artist.

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Eric Miles Williamson is an American novelist and literary critic, member of the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle, editor of American Book Review, Boulevard, and Texas Review. He is currently a professor of English at the University of Texas-Pan American. He can be found online at www.ericmileswilliamson.wordpress.com.

Caravaggio

Rain washes away our thoughts. The window across the way insulates our vacant stare. We don’t know why this happens — maybe it’s a hibernating winter-feel; maybe it’s the noise of raindrops tapping on the roof. At any rate, today we’re coloring ourselves optimistic with literature news from the Web. Here goes: Caravaggio, the original gangsta. There’s Middle Style in The Believer and Chopin’s 200th birthday arrives, again. That names but a few. Here’s more: poisoned alcohol circulates (some mornings we think it’s all that’s available) and a quote from this year’s political thriller, Game Change, gets naughty. Uncovered you tramp into the literary world. Us, we’re grabbing the umbrella. – Andrew Geer

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