Some men are by nature explorers; my nature is to stay under the same moon and stars, and if the weather is wet, under the same roof. It's a strange world, why make it stranger?

If your train's on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station.

Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.

The great thing about writing: Stay with it ... ultimately you teach yourself something very important about yourself.

We didn't starve but nobody ate chicken unless we were sick or the chicken was.

I write a book at least three times-once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say.

We have two lives, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.