Notoriety and a fat bank balance must come after everything else is finished and done.

When rivers flooded, when fire fell from the sky, what a fine place the library was, the many rooms, the books. With luck, no one found you. How could they!--when you were off to Tanganyika in '98, Cairo in 1812, Florence in 1492!?

I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.

[He] was always here to offer cups of good clear Walden Pond, or shout down the deep well of Shakespeare and listen, with satisfaction, for echoes. Here the lion and the hartebeest lay together, here the jackass became a unicorn.

Don’t worry about things. Don’t push. Just do your work and you’ll survive. The important thing is to have a ball, to be joyful, to be loving and to be explosive. Out of that comes everything and you grow.

Science and religion have to go hand in hand with the mystery, because there's a certain point beyond which you say, "There are no answers."

How to feel your way toward something honest, hidden under the trapdoor on the top of your skull.