Different times and different structures make more sense at one point in life than at another.

I have a very basic notion of the structure the book might have - that's mostly it. The rest is luck and happenstance.

I'm an elephant today. I will need to have lots of room and also a bowl of water on the floor.

I believe my friends think I'm funny. All the books are full of humor. Maybe it is a quiet sort of humor that masquerades as not-much-at-all. It is certainly easy to miss.

First, he says, you have to go out into the world. This is not a simple matter of going outside one's door. No, that is simply going out. That's what one does when one is on the way to the store to buy a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a bottle of wine. When one goes out into the world, one is shedding preconceptions of past paths and ideas of past paths, and trying to move freely through an unsubstantiated and new geography.

In searching for a way out of my own troubles, I had found my way into the troubles of others, some long gone, and now I was trying to find my way back out, through their troubles, as if we human beings can ever learn from one another.

If he acts, if he doesn't, it's meaningless. The whole thing goes forward. No one is important. No one at all.