Adventure is putting one's ignorance into motion.

Whoever the last true cowboy in America turns out to be, he's likely to be an Indian.

The biggest hindrance to learning is fear of showing one's self a fool.

Without the errors, wrong turns and blind alleys, without the doubling back and misdirection and fumbling and chance discoveries, there was not one bit of joy in walking the labyrinth.

For me, writing is not a search for explanations but a ramble in quest of what informs a place, a hunt for equivalents.

The hotel was once where things coalesced, where you could meet both townspeople and travelers. Not so in a motel. No matter how you build it, the motel remains the haunt of the quick and dirty, where the only locals are Chamber of Commerce boys every fourth Thursday. Who ever heard the returning traveler exclaim over one of the great motels of the world he stayed in? Motels can be big, but never grand.

Somewhere lives a bad Cajun cook, just as somewhere must live one last ivory-billed woodpecker. For me, I don't expect ever to encounter either one.