At first, I spend about four hours a day writing. Toward the end of a book, I spend up to 16 hours a day on it, because all I want to do is make it good and get it done.

The combination of domesticity and wildness - that's a deep expression

Don't worry about being worried. You're heading out on an adventure and you can always change your mind along the way and try something else.

Curing yourself of obsessive compulsive disorder by going to a strip club is pretty strange.

Most teachers have little control over school policy or curriculum or choice of texts or special placement of students, but most have a great deal of autonomy inside the classroom. To a degree shared by only a few other occupations, such as police work, public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid.

Things were here before you and will be here after you're gone. The geographic features, especially, give you a sense of your own place in the world and in time

I've gotta keep life and computers separate, or else I'm gonna go mad.