Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves.

Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves.

I can't predict how reading habits will change. But I will say that the greatest loss is the paper archive - no more a great stack of manuscripts, letters, and notebooks from a writer's life, but only a tiny pile of disks, little plastic cookies where once were calligraphic marvels.

Albania in 1994 was the strangest place I've ever seen. It was like walking into the looking glass: falling apart, paranoid people, anarchy, no one farming, full of thieves. It was beyond any Third World country. They were living in their own private nightmare.

One of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.

Gain a modest reputation for being unreliable and you will never be asked to do a thing.

It is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.