Someone who seems doddery is perhaps not doddery at all but only an older person absorbed in squinting concentration, as though on an ultimate trip, memorizing a scene, grateful for being alive to see it.

Maine is a joy in the summer. But the soul of Maine is more apparent in the winter.

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

My house is a place I have spent many years improving to the point where I have no desire to leave it.

It's not fashionable but I like to spit out of the window of a moving train.

Travel is a state of mind. It has nothing to do with existence or the exotic. It is almost always an inner experience.

When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa; I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call, but I wrote letters, I wrote short stories, I wrote books.