It has been my experience that most human stories are circular rather than linear. Regardless of the path we choose, we somehow end up where we commenced - in part, I suspect, because the child who lives in us goes along for the ride.

When people make a contract with the devil and give him an air-conditioned office to work in, he doesn't go back home easily.

I think all good narration contains an element of mystery and suspense. If it didn't, if the storyline were predictable, we would have no interest in reading it.

But the participants [in war] never forgot the details of their experience, and like the Wandering Jew, they were condemned to remain their own history books, each containing a story they could not pass on to others and from which no one would learn anything of value.

You have two choices in life. You either die or do something with your time. You're going to be doing something - why not write?

Don't undo a brave and noble deed. Don't rob yourself of your own virtue.

In the alluvial sweep of the land, I thought I could see the past and the present and the future all at once, as though time were not sequential in nature but took place without a beginning or an end, like a flash of green light rippling outward from the center of creation, not unlike a dream inside the mind of God.