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.

The mountebank told them that God was surely trying to kill them, possibly because He was through with them, and that they should have the good manners to die. This, as you can see, they did.

I wish we had all been born birds instead.

People should practice an art in order to make their souls grow and not to make money or become famous. Paint a picture. Write.

I taught writing for a while and whenever somebody would tell me they were going to write about their dad, I would tell them they might as well go write about killing puppies because neither story was going to work. It just doesn't work.

. . . but the Universe is an awfully big place. There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree.

His mother understood my illness immediately, that it was my world rather than myself that was diseased.