The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage.

His tiredness hurt so much it kept him awake.

Good novels are produced by people who voluntarily isolate themselves and go deep, and report from the depths on what they find.

I feel that working environmentalists are, in the main, happier than armchair environmentalists.

[T]hat I could find company and consolation and hope in an object pulled almost at random from a bookshelf--felt akin to an instance of religious grace.

When I was younger, the main struggle was to be a 'good writer.' Now I more or less take my writing abilities for granted, although this doesn't mean I always write well.

I really enjoy doing both, but I didn't write nonfiction until 1994.