It was as if pain were a room he had entered and the door had been locked behind him.

There's a Welsh poet, R.S. Thomas. He was a very crotchety, strange man, but his poems are wonderful. He was nominated for the Nobel in the 1990s but never won.

Actions have consequences. Ignorance about the nature of those actions does not free a person from responsibility for the consequences. (28)

I had not read George Eliot, so read a few. I felt ashamed I hadn't read "Middlemarch" before.

Most women are more into real estate than sex. They want to own you.

I majored in English in college and that was my major in graduate school before switching to creative writing. I read a lot of [Charles] Dickens and [Anthony ] Trollope, but there was lots of stuff I hadn't read like Thackeray's "Vanity Fair," which is so well written and funny.

Each thing I do, I rush through so I can do something else. In such a way do the days pass - -a blend of stock car racing and the never ending building of a gothic cathedral. Through the windows of my speeding car I see all that I love falling away: books unread, jokes untold, landscapes unvisited.