I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped.

Suddenly the day was gone, night came out from under each tree and spread.

Where would you like to go, what would you really like to do with your life? See Istanbul, Port Said, Nairobi, Budapest. Write a book. Smoke too many cigarettes. Fall off a cliff but get caught in a tree halfway down. Get shot at a few times in a dark alley on a Morrocan midnight. Love a beautiful woman.

The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts.

When I was a young man, I didn't think about having a family. My wife and I were too poor to have babies. Then all of a sudden, one came along and scared the hell out of us because we had no money. Once the baby arrives, you make do somehow. You fall in love with the baby and life adjusts itself. You find you don't need as much money as you thought. When that happens, you can ask the questions that should have come before the baby.

Anything you dream is fiction, and anything you accomplish is science, the whole history of mankind is nothing but science fiction.

You can make yourself happy or miserable - it's the same amount of effort.