Even in the darkest moments, light exists if you have faith to see it.

Vladimir Nabokov said the two great evils of the 20th century were Marx and Freud. He was absolutely correct.

The world is full of broken people. Splints, casts, miracle drugs, and time can't mend fractured hearts, wounded hearts, wounded minds, torn spirits.

What sucks the worst is . . . this world was a gift to us, and we broke it, and part of the deal is that if we want things right, we have to fix it ourselves. But we can't. We try, but we can't.

When life hands us a beutiful bouquet of flowers we stare at it in cautious expectation of a bee.

All I asked was that I be spared surprises, although, in this world of six billion souls, all acting with free will and too many with audacity, surprises are inevitable, too few of them are the kind that make you smile and that lift your heart.

I realized you might make money at writing, and you might even make a living at it. So after that I didn't write stories just for the class but wrote them for the purpose of submitting them somewhere, and at some point in the process, I began writing them just to please myself and that's where you begin to see the real value of a life of writing.