...the air so still it aches like the place where the tooth was on the morning after you’ve been to the dentist or aches like your heart in the bosom when you stand on the street corner waiting for the light to change and happen to recollect how things once were and how they might have been yet if what happened had not happened.

History is all explained by geography.

I reckon I am a smart aleck, but it is just a way to pass the time.

There is nothing more alone than being in a car at night in the rain.

Maybe a man has to sell his soul to get the power to do good.

The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it, would save him.

I've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can't do without.