In this glare of brilliant emptiness, in this arid intensity of pure heat, in the heart of a weird solitude, great silence and grand desolution, all things recede to distrances out of reach, relecting light but impossible to touch, annihilating all thought and all that men have made to a spasm of whirling dust far out on the golden desert.

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.

Life without music would be an intolerable insult.

Baseball serves as a good model for democracy in action: Every player is equally important and each has a chance to be a hero.

Scientific method: There's a madness in the method.

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

Only the half-mad are wholly alive.