I don't read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a steady assignment of reading. I'm also a judge for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which gives awards to literature and nonfiction.

The brain is a muscle of busy hills, the struggle of unthought things with things eternally thought.

Ideas brush past fleeting and insubstantial as moths. But I let them go, I don't want them. What I want is a voice.

Sometimes I stumble upon a wonderfully irresistible to me voice, unexpectedly.

The body can't distinguish between cleansing and punishing for the body is ignorant, and mute besides.

All that matters in life is forging deep ties of love and family and friends. Writing and reading come later.

. . . there is a wish in the heart of mankind to be distracted and confused. Truth is but one attraction, and not always the most powerful.