One hand, five homes. A lifetime in a fist.

Isolation offered its own form of companionship: the reliable silence of her rooms, the steadfast tranquility of the evenings. The promise that she would find things where she put them, that there would be no interruption, no surprise. It greeted her at the end of each day and lay still with her at night.

Being a writer means taking the leap from listening to saying 'Listen to me'.

Writing is one of the most assertive things a person can do.

...that in spite of living in a mansion an American is not above wearing a pair of secondhand pants, bought for fifty cents.

While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination." (from "The Third and Final Continent")

I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different.