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 never have lunch because it makes me foggy-headed.

Although charismatic, James Dean is no Harrison Ford. In the majority of his movies, sooner or later he got the crap beaten out of him.

Literary fiction, as a strict genre, is all but dead. Meanwhile, most genres flourish.

We're out of cocktail olives, it's a tragedy of historic proportions, but we're coping because we're Americans.

No degree of prosperity can be sufficient to eliminate all misfortune, and sloth is impervious to opportunity.

In each little life, we can see great truth and beauty, and in each little life we glimpse the way of all things in the universe. If we alow ourselves to be enchanted by the beauty of the ordinary, we begin to see that all things extraordinary.