So I write mainly for the fun of it, the hell of it, the duty of it. I enjoy writing and will probably be a scribbler on my dying day, sprawled on some stony trail halfway between two dry waterholes.

A giant thirst is a great joy when quenched in time.

Why can't we simply borrow what is useful to us from Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, especially Zen, as we borrow from Christianity, science, American Indian traditions and world literature in general, including philosophy, and let the rest go hang? Borrow what we need but rely principally upon our own senses, common sense and daily living experience.

I do not believe in personal immortality; it seems so unnecessary. Show me one man who deserves to live forever.

Paradise for a happy man lies in his own good nature.

I believe that there is a kind of poetry, even a kind of truth, in simple fact.

Mozart, striving for perfection, wrote the same symphony forty-one times. In his case, it worked. He wrote a perfect symphony.