I, too, seem to be a connoisseur of rain, but it does not fill me with joy; it allows me to steep myself in a solitude I nurse like a vice I've refused to vanquish.

Nothing teaches great writing like the very best books do. Yet, good teachers often help students cross that bridge, and I have to say that I had a few extraordinary English teachers in high school whom I still credit for their guidance.

Now is almost always the better choice. You never know about later.

And then there's the personal question so many of Lassie's fans want to ask: Is he allowed on the furniture? Of course he is-but, then, he's the one who paid for it.

I see life as increasingly complex, vivid, colorful, crazy, chaotic. That's the world I write about...the world I live in.

There you are, diligently swimming a straight line, minding the form of your strokes, when you look up and see, always a shock, the currents you can't even feel have pulled you off course.

All I meant was that people take their same old lives wherever they go. No place is perfect enough to strip you of that. And some places have a way of magnifying your demons, or of, I don't know, giving them pep pills.