If you're never ridden a fast horse at a dead run across a desert valley at dawn, be of good cheer: You've only missed out on one half of life.

My loyalties will not be bound by national borders, or confined in time by one nation's history, or limited in the spiritual dimension by one language and culture. I pledge my allegiance to the damned human race, and my everlasting love to the green hills of Earth, and my intimations of glory to the singing stars, to the very end of space and time.

As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth.

I was once invited to take part in a heroic, possibly fatal enterprise, but I declined, mainly on account of sloth.

I am happy to be a regional writer. My region is the American West, old Mexico, West Virginia, New York, Europe, Australia, the human heart, and the male groin.

Proust again: One can only wish that a man with such powers of total recall had led a less tedious life, moved among somewhat livelier circles.

Great art is indefinable but that's all right; it exists anyway.