I love everything about motels. I can't help myself. I still get excited every time I slip a key into a motel room door and fling it open.

Beulah has a husband?' I know. It's a miracle. There can't be more than two people on the planet who'd be willing to sleep with her, and here we are both in the same town.

Not writing the same kind of book over and over again is to me the real pleasure of what I do.

I mused for a few moments on the question of which was worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted, or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored.

18th century scientists, the French in particular, seldom did things simply if an absurdly demanding alternative was available.

Perhaps it's my natural pessimism, but it seems that an awfully large part of travel these days is to see things while you still can.

The number of people on whose cooperative efforts your eventual existence depends has risen to approximately 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, which is several thousand times the total number of people who have ever lived.