“No matter how close we got to a station or a disc jockey … they could disappear into the ether without so much as a wave goodbye or a farewell song.”

Ryan Stout, a straight-arrow-looking kind of guy, shocks the crowd into laughter with his inventive interplay between innocence and a jarringly twisted point of view.

He goes from loony to weirdly logical. With him, it’s more than clever writing; his comedy is based on clear and clever thinking.

This world of ours is piled high with farewells and goodbyes of so many different kinds, like the evening sky renewing itself again and again from one instant to the next-and I didn’t want to forget a single one.

A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.

And now, farewell to kindness, humanity and gratitude… I have substituted myself for Providence in rewarding the good; may the God of vengeance now yield me His place to punish the wicked.

They make a desolation and call it peace.

Keep our marriage alive, and farewell.

A farewell to my shadow is not my death; it’s my rebirth in darkness.

Farewell, ole Maser, don’t think hard of me, I’m going on to Canada, where all the slaves are free.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.