“The reason to moderate is to avoid having to quit.”

“Perhaps swimming was dancing under the water, he thought. To swim under lily pads seeing their green slender stalks wavering as you passed, to swim under upraised logs past schools of sunfish and bluegills, to swim through reed beds past wriggling water snakes and miniature turtles, to swim in small lakes, big lakes, Lake Michigan, to swim in small farm ponds, creeks, rivers, giant rivers where one was swept along easefully by the current, to swim naked alone at night when you were nineteen and so alone you felt like you were choking every waking moment, having left home for reasons more hormonal than rational; reasons having to do with the abstraction of the future and one's questionable place in the world of the future, an absurdity not the less harsh for being so widespread.”

“My advice is, do not try to inhabit another's soul. You have your own.”

“(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.”

“Nothing on my trip thus far was as I expected which shows you that rather than simply read about the United States you have to log the journey.”

“(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.”

“In Ecuador the Indian mate was too poor to buy Polaroid glasses but he saw the caudal fins of marlin long before my perfect eyes noticed anything. Benny played pool as if the cue stick emerged from his body. Not my alcohol & geometry. She was an asshole and I couldn't have loved her at gunpoint.”