The voodoo priest and all his powders were as nothing compared to espresso, cappuccino, and mocha, which are stronger than all the religions of the world combined, and perhaps stronger than the human soul itself.

Perhaps he was a fool, but he thought that if a work were truly great you would only have to read it once and you would be stolen from yourself, desperately moved, changed forever.

I have always thought limousines make me dreadfully uncomfortable, just the way that suits do. When I wear a suit, I feel like ants and termites are crawling all over my body. It's really, really uncomfortable. People put themselves in a kind of prison. It's like the world of the embassies.

I had a period in my life, maybe a decade or so, in which I was involved in that kind of thing, associating with the elite of various segments of society. It always made me extremely uncomfortable. I couldn't wait to get out of there and change my clothes. The good part about that was getting home and changing into my regular clothes. Taking off the suit and the tie, taking off the tight shoes, and just relaxing. Being away from that stuff. It was stimulating, but I never liked it. I always felt it was a terrible, terrible burden.

Winter then in its early and clear stages, was a purifying engine that ran unhindered over city and country, alerting the stars to sparkle violently and shower their silver light into the arms of bare upreaching trees. It was a mad and beautiful thing that scoured raw the souls of animals and man, driving them before it until they loved to run. And what it did to Northern forests can hardly be described, considering that it iced the branches of the sycamores on Chrystie Street and swept them back and forth until they rang like ranks of bells.

The best way to meet a woman is in an emergency situation - if you're in a shipwreck, or you find yourself behind enemy lines, or in a flood.

The horse could not do without Manhattan. It drew him like a magnet, like a vacuum, like oats, or a mare, or an open, never-ending, tree-lined road.