...for the first time in my life, writing was hard. The problem was the teaching...by most Friday afternoons I felt as if I'd spent the week with jumper cables clamped to my brain.

The past is obdurate.

We all have a tendency to want order in our lives. But order presupposes authority, and authority presupposes, sooner or later, that we'll all need hooves. It's going to happen sooner or later, isn't it? You know it is.

Did it [cocaine] for about eight years. Not a terribly long time to be an addict I guess, but it is longer than World War II.

I have no plans to get an iPad. I know it will do more things than my Kindle, but I don’t want more things. If I want other stuff - movies, TV shows, weather forecasts, the forthcoming Josh Ritter album - I have my Mac.

The world had moved on and all that was over, done before fairly begun.

Friends come in and out of our lives, like busboys in a restaurant.