In my memoir, I admit that I've been as fearful of success as of failure. In fact, when 'Passages' was published, I so dreaded bad reviews that I ran away to Italy with a girlfriend and our children to hide out.

As we reach midlife in the middle thirties or early forties, we are not prepared for the idea that time can run out on us, or for the startling truth that if we don't hurry to pursue our own definition of a meaningful existence, life can become a repetition of trivial maintenance duties.

Speed as a drug disorganizes the personality; speed as the goal of information dissemination commits a subtler crime. People are mainlining our words. We rarely read of the rational alternatives, only of the commands that all must change or else. This is a prescription for public panic.

The source of continuing aliveness was to find your passion and pursue it, with whole heart and single mind.

There is no more defiant denial of one man's ability to possess one woman exclusively than the prostitute who refuses to redeemed.

Changes are not only possible and predictable, but to deny them is to be an accomplice to one's own unnecessary vegetation.

If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.