Here was one place where I could find out who I was and what I was going to become. And that was the public library.

Can the imagination, any more than the boy, be held prisoner ?" - from the foreword to the 1976 edition of "The Painted Bird

Going around under an umbrella interferes with one's looking up at the sky.

I don't fret over lost time - I can always use the situations in a novel.

My choice of a life of adventure may well have been a result of the fact that action raised my blood pressure giving me enough energy to live.

There must be no worse punishment to a totalitarian nation than the withdrawal of capital.

Physical comfort has nothing to do with any other comfort.