Sometimes it's better not to look back.

If I never went home, what exactly would I be missing? I pictured my cold cavernous house, my friendless town full of bad memories, the utterly unremarkable life that had been mapped out for me. It had never once occurred to me, I realized, to refuse it.

When you're writing, at least when I'm writing, I don't think about themes and I try not to sermonize with any particular message.

Strange, I thought, how you can be living your dreams and your nightmares at the very same time.

I'd been born in the wrong century, and I felt cheated.

There was romance in the unknown, but once a place had been discovered and cataloged and mapped, it was diminished, just another dusty fact in a book, sapped of mystery. So maybe it was better to leave a few spots on the map blank. To let the world keep a little of its magic, rather than forcing it to divulge every last secret. Maybe it was better, now and then, to wonder.

It's easy to say you don't care about money when you have plenty of it.