'Morality must leave itself open to repudiation; it provides one possibility of settling conflict, a way of encompassing conflict which allows the continuance of personal relationships against the hard and apparently inevitable fact of misunderstanding, mutually incompatible wishes, commitments, loyalties, interests and needs, a way of mending relationships and maintaining the self in opposition to itself or others. Other ways of settling or encompassing conflict are provided by politics, religion, love and forgiveness, rebellion, and withdrawal. Morality is a valuable way because the others are so often inaccessible or brutal; but it is not everything; it provides a door through which someone, alienated or in danger of alienation from another through his action, can return by the offering and the acceptance of explanation, excuses and justifications, or by the respect one human being will show another who sees and can accept the responsibility for a position which he himself would not adopt. We do not have to agree with one another in order to live in the same moral world, but we do have to know and accept one another's differences. And what we can respect, and how far and how deeply, are not matters of what "feeling" a "reason" "causes" in us.

But although morality is open to repudiation, either by the prophet or the raging and suffering self, or by the delinquent or the oldest and newest evil, and though it cannot assure us that we will have no enemies nor that our actions are beyond reproach even when they pass all moral tests; not just anybody, in any way, can repudiate it.'

'extremely dead / but talkative'

'Dear Mr. Berryman, frankly I hope to be promoted from assistant professor to associate professor by writing a book about you. Are you willing to join me in this unworthy endeavor?'

'and look for a little fun / but I find a darkened corner / 'cause I still miss someone'

'We discourage the use of in-ear listening devices while walking or jogging in public areas, and encourage pedestrians to remain alert to their surroundings instead.'

The new Field record was just the thing I needed to hear tonight, but it would have been better if I could have convinced the driver to turn out the lights on the bus.

A man and a woman struck up a conversation on the bus tonight. It was snowing heavily, so they talked about the weather. At one point the man brought up the way that some people anticipate bad weather by feeling swelling in their joints. 'I always used to think people were lying about that!' the woman said. Later, they discussed the folly of youth in inclement weather.

Last night there was a paper cup rolling around on the floor at the back of the bus, for a good fifteen minutes. On his way out the man sitting in the back row picked up the cup and set it upright on the floor in front of the seat closest to the door.

On the bus, in the morning, an old woman had a long conversation with the couple sitting next to her. Their names were Virginia and Cleveland.

There is a joke in there somewhere.