The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave

I stood face to face with the moon and the ocean and the future that spread out with all its bewildering immensity before me.

It did not look like the work of God, but it might have represented the handicraft of a God with a joyous sense of humor, a dancing God who loved mischief as much as prayer, and playfulness as much as mischief.

We old athletes carry the disfigurements and markings of contests remembered only by us and no one else. Nothing is more lost than a forgotten game.

The fruit tasted foreign but indigenous, like sunlight a tree had changed through patience.

Laughter is the only strategy that has ever worked at all for me when my world is falling apart.

I can't pass a bookstore without slipping inside, looking for the next book that will burn my hand when I touch its jacket, or hand me over a promissory note of such immense power that it contains the formula that will change everything about me.