“The sun is rising through a yellow, howling wind. Time for breakfast. Inside the trailer now, broiling bacon and frying eggs with good appetite, I hear the sand patter like rain against the metal walls and brush across the windowpanes. A fine silt accumulates beneath the door and on the window ledge. The trailer shakes in a sudden gust. All one to me -- sandstorm or sunshine I am content, so long as I have something to eat, good health, the earth to take my stand on, and light behind the eyes to see by.”

“I am alone. They have gone into the house for breakfast, and I am left standing by the wall among the flowers. It is very early, before lessons. Flower after flower is specked on the depths of green. The petals are harlequins. Stalks rise from the black hollows beneath. The flowers swim like fish made of light upon the dark, green waters. I hold a stalk in my hand. I am the stalk. My roots go down to the depths of the world, through earth dry with brick, and damp earth, through veins of lead and silver. I am all fibre. All tremors shake me, and the weight of the earth is pressed to my ribs. Up here my eyes are green leaves, unseeing.”

“Please do, however, allow me to deliver one very personal message. It is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: Rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg."Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?”

“What an ambiance, and such a pity I'm alone: Candles giving off their glow, gusts of wind and the light tapping of rain on the windowpane - a massage for the mind. And a comforting one, too.”

“I have at least the whole of my life to answer a question: Who am I? And who is the other? A gust of wind at dawn? A motionless landscape? A trembling leaf? A coil of white smoke above a mountain? I write all these words and I hear the wind, not outside, but inside my head. A strong wind, it rattles the shutters through which I enter the dream.”

“MAMBO SUN""Beneath the bebop moon I want to croon with you Beneath the Mambo Sun I got to be the one with you My life's a shadowless horse If I can't get across to you In the alligator rain My heart's all pain for you Girl you're good And I've got wild knees for you On a mountain range I'm Dr. Strange for you Upon a savage lake Make no mistake I love you I got a powder-keg leg And my wig's all pooped for you With my hat in my hand I'm a hungry man for you I got stars in my beard And I feel real weird for you Beneath the bebop moon I'm howling like a loon for you Beneath the mumbo sun I've got to be the one for you”