A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.

Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be.

The first and most important thing of all, at least for writers today, is to strip language clean, to lay it bare down to the bone.

Every damn thing is your own fault, if you are any good.

It is impossible to believe the emotional and spiritual intensity and pure, classic beauty that can be produced by a man, an animal, and a piece of scarlet serge draped over a stick.

Go all the way with it. Do not back off. For once, go all the goddamn way with what matters.

Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the cuckoo clock style of architecture.