“I can believe things that are true
and things that aren't true
and I can believe things
where nobody knows
if they're true or not. 

I can believe in Santa Claus
and the Easter Bunny
and the Beatles
and Marilyn Monroe
and Elvis
and Mister Ed.
Listen -
I believe that people are perfectable,
that knowledge is infinite,
that the world is run
by secret banking cartels
and is visited by aliens
on a regular basis,
nice ones
that look like wrinkled lemurs
and bad ones who mutilate cattle
and want our water and our women. 

I believe that the future *****
and I believe that the future rocks
and I believe that one day
White Buffalo Woman is going to come back
and kick everyone's ***.
I believe that all men
are just overgrown boys
with deep problems communicating
and that the decline
in good *** in America
is coincident
with the decline in drive-in movie theaters
from state to state. 

I believe that all politicians
are unprincipled crooks
and I still believe that they are better
than the alternative.
I believe that California
is going to sink into the sea
when the big one comes,
while Florida
is going to dissolve into madness
and alligators
and toxic waste. 

I believe that antibacterial soap
is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease
so that one day
we'll all be wiped out by the common cold
like martians in War of the Worlds. 

I believe that the greatest poets of the last century
were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis,
that jade is dried dragon *****,
and that thousands of years ago
in a former life
I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. 

I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars.
I believe that candy
really did taste better when I was a kid,
that it's aerodynamically impossible
for a bumble bee to fly,
that light is a wave and a particle,
that there's a cat in a box somewhere
who's alive and dead
at the same time
(although
if they don't ever open the box
to feed it
it'll eventually just be
two different kinds of dead),
and that there are stars in the universe
billions of years older
than the universe itself. 

I believe in a personal god
who cares about me
and worries
and oversees everything I do.
I believe in an impersonal god
who set the universe in motion
and went off to hang with her girlfriends
and doesn't even know
that I'm alive.
I believe in an empty and godless universe
of causal chaos,
background noise,
and sheer blind luck. 

I believe that anyone
who says *** is overrated
just hasn't done it properly.
I believe that anyone
who claims to know what's going on
will lie about the little things too. 

I believe in absolute honesty
and sensible social lies.
I believe in a woman's right to choose,
a baby's right to live,
that while all human life is sacred
there's nothing wrong with the death penalty
if you can trust the legal system
implicitly,
and that no one but a *****
would ever trust the legal system. 

I believe that life is a game,
that life is a cruel joke,
and that life is what happens
when you're alive
and that you might as well
lie back and enjoy it.”

She stopped,
out of breath.