I make my share of mistakes, but one I never make is to underestimate the power of things. People imbued from childhood with the myth of the primacy of feeling seldom like to admit they really want things as much as they might want love, but my career has convinced me that plenty of them do. And some want things a lot worse than they want love.

Occasionally the very youngness of the young moved him to charity--they had no sense of the swiftness of life, nor of its limits. The years would pass like weeks, and loves would pass too, or else grow sour.

The tradition I was born into was essentially nomadic, a herdsmen tradition, following animals across the earth. The bookshops are a form of ranching; instead of herding cattle, I herd books. Writing is a form of herding, too; I herd words into little paragraph-like clusters.

Maybe you can make art out of unredeemed pain, but only if you're a genius -- Dostoyevsky perhaps.

It's a fine world, though rich in hardships at times.

The earth is mostly just a boneyard. But pretty in the sunlight.

I don't see how being married could be any worse than listening to you talk for twenty years, but that still ain't much of a recommendation for it.