“The mind is the only thing about human beings that’s worth anything. Why does it have to be tied to a bag of skin, blood, hair, meat, bones and tubes? No wonder people can’t get anything done, stuck for life with a parasite that has to be stuffed with food and protected from weather and germs all the time. And the fool thing wears out anyway – no matter how much you stuff and protect it.”

“Sometimes you wonder, “How did I get myself into that scene? Why did I take that on?” You know, you couldn’t really have done anything different at that time. Now maybe, if that comes around again, you might think twice, not think about it at all, or not do anything at all about it. But let it play itself out as it now presents itself. That’s called being open to life’s changes, however subtle or outrageous they come.”

“But that’s the wonderful thing about foreign travel, suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything, you have only the most basic sense of how things work, you can’t even reliably cross the street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.”

“In my life I haven’t done anything worth writing about, but that’s OK. That’s why I write fiction.”

“Daylight won’t protect you from anything. Bad things happen all the time; they don’t wait until after dinner”

“...if you spent all your time being protected, you never got to find out anything new.”