I fished upstream coming ever closer and closer to the narrow staircase of the canyon. Then I went up into it as if I were entering a department store. I caught three trout in the lost and found department.

It's pretty hard to have faith when everybody is trying to lock you up.

I thought about it for awhile, hiding it from the rest of my mind. But I didn't ruin my birthday by secretly thinking about it too hard

I didn't know the full dimensions of forever, but I knew it was longer than waiting for Christmas to come.

I'll think about things for thirty or forty years before I'll write it.

...what makes you older is when your bones, muscles and blood wear out, when the heart sinks into oblivion and all the houses you ever lived in are gone and people are not really certain that your civilization ever existed.

He learned about life at sixteen, first from Dostoevsky and then from the whores of New Orleans.