The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality.

I thought that perhaps the most creative mix for a society would be nine parts solid worker from institutions like MIT to one part poet from Marrakech, but in spite of the fact that I myself had been trained to be one of the solid workers, which meant that all of my sympathies lay with that group, I would not surrender the poet. The problem was to find him.

All I can do is play the game the way the cards fall.

Animals form an inalienable fragment of nature, and if we hasten the disappearance of even one species, we diminish our world and our place in it.

A writer can make a fortune in America, but he can't make a living.

I am always interested in why young people become writers, and from talking with many I have concluded that most do not want to be writers working eight and ten hours a day and accomplishing little; they want to have been writers, garnering the rewards of having completed a best-seller. They aspire to the rewards of writing but not to the travail.

Public libraries have been a mainstay of my life. They represent an individual's right to acquire knowledge; they are the sinews that bind civilized societies the world over. Without libraries, I would be a pauper, intellectually and spiritually.