I had good innings, as the British say. I wrote for 38 years at the top of my form, and I wanted to quit on a high note.

The mind wants to live forever, or to learn a very good reason why not. The mind wants the world to return its love, or its awareness... The mind's sidekick, however, will settle for two eggs over easy. The dear, stupid body is easily satisfied as a spaniel. And, incredibly, the simple spaniel can lure the brawling mind to its dish. It is everlastingly funny that the proud, metaphysically ambitious mind will hush if you give it an egg.

The way you live your days is the way you live your life.

If I actually believed that the progress of human understanding depended on our crop of contemporary novelists, I would shoot myself.

He judged the instant and let go; he flung himself loose into the stars.

The irrational haunts the metaphysical.

It's about waking up. A child wakes up over and over again, and notices that she's living. She dreams along, loving the exuberant life of the senses, in love with beauty and power, oblivious to herself -- and then suddenly, bingo, she wakes up and feels herself alive. She notices her own awareness. And she notices that she is set down here, mysteriously, in a going world.