“Gluttony - that's my vice & curse. I want too much of everything. Books... Love... Music... Color & Form... Philosophy... Travel & Adventure... the result of this bestial lust is the indiscriminate and promiscuous splaying of my energies - wanting all, I accomplish nothing; desiring everything, I satisfy nothing and am satisfied by nothing.”

“When I want to write something I just sit down (or stand up) and do it. Scribble, scribble, nothing could be easier. It helps, naturally, to have something to say.”

“A writer must be hard to live with: when not working he is miserable, and when he is working he is obsessed. Or so it is with me. Thus my writing life consists of spells of languor alternating with fits and spasms of mad typing. At all times, though, I keep a journal, a record book, and most everything begins in the form of notes scribbled down on the pages of that journal.”

“Me, I'm living under a sword too, as Jack may have told you. An old wino's disease, which could lay me in the grave most anytime. Not that I mind too much; I've done everything I ever wanted to do. But ... as you know, one would like to continue doing the good things over and over again, so long as there's pleasure in it.”

“most of my wandering in the desert i've done alone. not so much from choice as from necessity - i generally prefer to go into places where no one else wants to go. i find that in contemplating the natural world my pleasure is greater if there are not too many others contemplating it with me, at the same time.”

“I suppose each of us has his own fantasy of how he wants to die. I would like to go out in a blaze of glory, myself, or maybe simply disappear someday, far out in the heart of the wilderness I love, all by myself, alone with the Universe and whatever God may happen to be looking on. Disappear - and never return. That's my fantasy.”

“Love implies anger. The man who is angered by nothing cares about nothing.”