Life imitates art -- but badly.

In the first place you can't see anything from a car; you've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbush and cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail you'll begin to see something, maybe. Probably not.

A cowboy is a farm boy in leather britches and a comical hat.

Girls, like flowers, bloom but once. But once is enough.

In the afternoon I watch the clouds drift past the bald peak of Mount Tukuhnikivats. (Someone has to do it.)

Henry James was our master of periphrasis -- the fine art of saying as little as possible in the greatest number of words.

Life without music would be an intolerable insult.