Americans... are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier.

If a person survives an ordinary span of sixty years or more, there is every chance that his or her life as a shapely story has ended and all that remains to be experienced is epilogue. Life is not over, but the story is.

Be patient, Ophelia. Love, Hamlet

People stopped calling themselves Freethinkers because it was so specifically German and anything German was terribly unpopular because of the two world wars. My family became Unitarians instead - it's the same sort of thing.

Virtually every writer I know would rather be a musician.

Trout was petrified there on Forty-second Street. It had given him a life not worth living, but I had also given him an iron will to live. This was a common combination on the planet Earth.

Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn.