Minimalist poet, minimalist lifestyle

The angry wife met her husband at the door. His breath stunk of alcohol and his face was plastered with lipstick. "I assume," she barked, "there is a very good reason for you to come drifting in at six o'clock in the morning?" "There is!" he replied, "Breakfast."

J. Edgar Hoover, director of the F.B.I for nearly fifty years expressed his views on reports from assistants in bright blue ink reserved solely for his use. He would write in the margins of memorandums on all four borders around a typewritten sheet. Once an assistant filled the page to the edges so Hoover barely had room for a comment. He responded, "Watch the borders." Puzzled but obedient, his aides dispatched agents to patrol the Canadian and Mexican borders for a week.