When I was a little kid, I used to walk miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles of railroad tracks.

Sometimes I'm writing for magazines on assignment, but the university has to be patient with me. I mean, during the ten-week periods that I have a class, I'm there every Thursday night or whatever it is, but sometimes that's all I'm there, because I'm somewhere else the rest of the time.

Traveling is my priority, because it drives the writing, so I teach around the travel, and sometimes the travel is the teaching.

Stillness is a harder concept for me than ecstasy, but I can imagine it best when I am fully present and paying strict attention to a place I am moving through.

One thing I'm always thinking about myself is what am I willing to make up? And the answer is not much.

The Universe has a plan to make sure we don't ever stop learning, not only in our minds, but also in our hearts.

There's this great Ron Carlson story, "A Note on the Type," and it's about this guy who keeps escaping from prison. He's really good at escaping, but he gets caught all the time, because he can't stop writing his name on underpasses where he's running from the law. And there's this whole beautiful paragraph about how to run is to write. And, you know, it's obviously about the writer's life.