Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?

I used to run a full marathon in three hours and 25 or 26 minutes. Not any more.

There are many things we only see clearly in retrospect.

Being alive, if you had to define it, meant emitting a variety of smells.

I began running on an everyday basis after I became a writer. As being a writer requires sitting at a desk for hours a day, without getting some exercise you'd quickly get out of shape and gain weight, I figured.

Nothing so consumes a person as meaningless exertion

Some people think literature is high culture and that it should only have a small readership. I don't think so... I have to compete with popular culture, including TV, magazines, movies and video games.