I came to Houston for a job, the reason most people move halfway across the country with a first grader and a five-week-old. I came here to teach at Rice.

Rust, corrosion, wind, rain. The nibbling teeth of mice and the acrid droppings of insects and the devouring jaws of years. The was of nature upon machines, of the planet's chaotic forces upon the works of humankind. The energy that man had pulled from the earth was being inexorably pulled back into it, sucked like water down a drain. Before long, if it hadn't happened already, not a single high-tension pole would be left standing on the earth. Mankind had built a world that would take a hundred years to die. A century for the last light to go out.

The fact is, there's a great deal of hair-splitting fussiness when it comes to fly-fishing, most of it as silly as a top hat.

Writers who pretend that everything they're doing is completely new are full of it.

Writing is a job: you must show up.

My inventing time is all done under the influence of aerobic exercise. Basically, I do all my thinking while I run.

Kittredge had obviously misjudged her, but he had learned that was the way with most people. The story was never the story, and it surprised you, how much another person could carry.