There are some good things to be said about walking. Not many, but some. Walking takes longer, for example, than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life. Life is already too short to waste on speed. I have a friend who's always in a hurry; he never gets anywhere. Walking makes the world much bigger and thus more interesting. You have time to observe the details. The utopian technologists foresee a future for us in which distance is annihilated... To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me.

The ideal kitchen-sink novel: Throw in everything but the kitchen sink. Then add the kitchen sink.

By the age of forty, a man is responsible for his face. And his fate.

High technology has done us one great service: It has retaught us the delight of performing simple and primordial tasks - chopping wood, building a fire, drawing water from a spring

Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure.

Where all think alike there is little danger of innovation.

It is true that some of my fiction was based on actual events. But the events took place after the fiction was written.