I can maintain my sense of the sacredness of existence only by understanding my own limitations and losing my self-importance.

Perhaps when we die our names are takenfrom us by a divine magnet and are freeto flutter here and there within the bodies of birds.I'll be a simple crowwho can reach the top of Antelope Butte.(From: Hard Times)

I couldn't run a tight schedule, and if you're any good at teaching, you get sucked dry because you like your students and you're trying to help them, but you don't have any time left to write yourself.

I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that.

We Americans are trained to think big, talk big, act big, love big, admire bigness but then the essential mystery is in the small.

That's my only defense against this world: to build a sentence out of it.

I seek the substantial in life.