Jeremy and Karl and Elizabeth have known each other since the first day of kindergarten. Amy and Talis are a year younger...Now the five are inseparable; invincible. They imagine that life will always be like this--like a television show in eternal syndication--that they will always have each other. They use the same vocabulary. They borrow each other's books and music. They share lunches, and they never say anything when Jeremy comes over and takes a shower. They all know Jeremy's father is eccentric. He's supposed to be eccentric. He's a novelist.

We modern human beings are looking at life, trying to make some sense of it; observing a 'reality' that often seems to be unfolding in a foreign tongue--only we've all been issued the wrong librettos. For a text, we're given the Bible. Or the Talmud or the Koran. We're given Time magazine, and Reader's Digest, daily papers, and the six o'clock news; we're given schoolbooks, sitcoms, and revisionist histories; we're given psychological counseling, cults, workshops, advertisements, sales pitches, and authoritative pronouncements by pundits, sold-out scientists, political activists, and heads of state. Unfortunately, none of these translations bears more than a faint resemblance to what is transpiring in the true theater of existence, and most of them are dangerously misleading. We're attempting to comprehend the spiraling intricacies of a magnificently complex tragicomedy with librettos that describe the barrom melodramas or kindergarten skits. And when's the last time you heard anybody bitch about it to the management?

"I've always known I was gay, but it wasn't confirmed until I was in kindergarten.

Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with dry, uninspiring books on algebra, history, etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the 'creative bug' is just a wee voice telling you, 'I'd like my crayons back, please.

I'm like the kid in kindergarten I really do send valentines to everyone.

Once I accomplish one thing and I'm satisfied I try something else. I may be 50 and doing something totally outside of music and acting. Maybe I'll become a kindergarten teacher.

I want to clear up a few myths about myself. People have written that I was a kindergarten teacher and a former Miss Texas and neither is true.

I wanted to become a kindergarten teacher like my mother.

I love kids so two things that I have thought about are being a pediatrician or a kindergarten teacher.

We've been trained since kindergarten: Be nice be kind share put on a smile. So we're conditioned to squash our natural selfish instincts and that's the right thing for society.

I was up late last night yapping about the elections on CNN and up early this morning doing the same thing in my daughter's kindergarten class.

I was coming home from kindergarten - well they told me it was kindergarten. I found out later I had been working in a factory for ten years. It's good for a kid to know how to make gloves.

The Universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson.

From kindergarten to graduation I went to public schools and I know that they are a key to being sure that every child has a chance to succeed and to rise in the world.

I've wanted to perform my entire life. I found a paper I wrote in kindergarten class about what I wanted to be when I grew up - and I wrote 'a famous singer!'

I had a great education. From kindergarten to John Dewey High School in Coney Island I am public-school educated.