The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.

After a lifetime of world travel I've been fascinated that those in the third world don't have the same perception of reality that we do.

I did not want to live out my life in the strenuous effort to hold a ghost world together. It was plain as the stars that time herself moved in grand tidal sweeps rather than the tick-tocks we suffocate within, and that I must reshape myself to fully inhabit the earth rather than dawdle in the sump of my foibles.

I seek the substantial in life.

You touch things lightly or deeply; you move along because life herself moves, and you can’t stop it.

Fishing tournaments seem a little like playing tennis with living balls.

As an English major I was familiar with the stories of dozens of writers trying to get their work done among the multifarious diversions of the world and the hurdles of their own vices. A professor had said that what saved writers is that they, like politicians, had the illusion of destiny that allowed them to overcome obstacles no matter how nominal their work.