You don't die in the United States, you underachieve.

Chance was to work in the garden, where he would care for plants and grasses and trees which grew there peacefully. He would be as one on them: quiet, open hearted in the sunshine and heavy when it rained.

A novelist has a specific poetic license which also applies to his own life.

Like nature, our economic system remains, in the long run, stable and rational...We welcome the inevitable seasons of our economy! How foolish of us.

It is possible to stand around with a cocktail in one's hand and talk with everyone, which means with no one.

It seems that what I really want is a drug that will increase my consciousness of others, not myself.

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