Sightseeing was ... based on imaginative invention, like rehearsing your own play in stage sets from which all the actors had fled.

A gun show is about like-minded people who feel as if everything has been taken away from them - jobs, money, pride.

I think that love isn't what you think it is when you're in your twenties or even thirties.

You can't want to be a writer. You have to be one.

Friendship is also about liking a person for their failings, their weakness. It's also about mutual help, not about exploitation.

Reading liberates you. You could know about the world through reading.

It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled.