That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do.

You can't deny what you've learned; you can't deny your travels; you can't deny the nature of your life.

As a child I knew almost nothing, nothing beyond what I had picked up in my grandmother's house. All children, I suppose, come into the world like that, not knowing who they are.

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.

I grew up in a small place and left it when I was quite young and entered the bigger world.

This is unusual for me. I have given readings and not lectures. I have told people who ask for lectures that I have no lecture to give. And that is true.

It was a good place for getting lost in, a city no one ever knew, a city explored from the neutral heart outward, until after many years, it defined itself into a jumble of clearings separated by stretches of the unknown, through which the narrowest of paths had been cut.