John Irving once told me he doesn't start a novel until he knows the last sentence. I said, 'My God, Irving, isn't that like working in a factory?'

We are seldom as limited as we think we are.

Who knows how to make love stay? Tell love you are going to the Junior's Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if love stays, it can have half.

When we can converse with the animals, we will know the change is halfway here. When we can converse with the forest, we will know the change has come.

The most useful thing about art is it's uselessness.

Much scientific truth proved to be as hypothetical as poetic allegory. The relationshiip of those rod-connected blue and red balls to an actual atomic structure was about the same as the relationship of Christianity to the fish or the Lamb.

Should you fail to pilot your own ship, don't be surprised at what inappropriate port you find yourself docked.