“I'm hoping to be astonished tomorrowby I don't know what.”

“(from: Age Sixty-nine)There is this circle I walkthat I have learned to love.I hope one day to be a spiralbut to the birds I'm a circle.”

“The only advice I can give to aspiring writers is don't do it unless you're willing to give your whole life to it. Red wine and garlic also helps. ”

“I like grit, I like love and death, I'm tired of irony. ... A lot of good fiction is sentimental. ... The novelist who refuses sentiment refuses the full spectrum of human behavior, and then he just dries up. ... I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.”

“(from: Age Sixty-nine)Often, lately, the night is a cold mawand stars the scattered white teeth of the gods, which spare none of us. At dawn I have birds, clearly divine messengers that I don't understandyet day by day feel the grace of their intentions.”

“His own life suddenly seemed repellently formal. Whom did he know or what did he know and whom did he love? Sitting on the stump under the burden of his father's death and even the mortality inherent in the dying, wildly colored canopy of leaves, he somehow understood that life was only what one did every day.... Nothing was like anything else, including himself, and everything was changing all of the time. He knew he couldn't perceive the change because he was changing too, along with everything else.(from the novella, The Man Who Gave Up His Name)”

“The days are stacked against what we think we are.”