1. To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: watch out for life.
I have caught life. I have come down with life. I was a wisp of undifferentiated nothingness, and then a little peephole opened quite suddenly. Light and sound poured in. Voices began to describe me and my surroundings. Nothing they said could be appealed. They said I was a boy named Rudolph Waltz, and that was that. They said the year was 1932, and that was that. They said I was in Midland City, Ohio, and that was that.
They never shut up. Year after year they piled detail upon detail. They do it still. You know what they say now? They say the year is 1982, and that I am fifty years old.
Blah, blah, blah. (1)

1. This is my principal objection to life, I think: It is too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes. (6)

3. How they wished that their peepholes would close! But the nightmare went on and on. And then it became a daymare. (17)

4. He was an artist, you see, interested in enterprises far loftier than mere pharmacy. (20)

6. And I do not see how I can get out of asking this question: Does it matter to anyone or anything that all these peepholes were closed so suddenly? Since all the property is undamaged, has the world lost anything it loved? (36)

6. And I do not mean to mock him. He had been just another wisp of undifferentiated nothingness, like the rest of us, and then all the light and sound poured in. (41)

6. On his deathbed at the County Hospital, when Father was listing all his virtues and vices, he said that at least he had been wonderful with children, that they had all found him a lot of fun. “I understand them,” he said. (42)