A mathematical proof is beautiful, but when you're finished, it's really only about one thing. A story can be about many things.

Donkeys are the most misunderstood and abused animals around the world.

I think by writing about a place with great specificity, you manage to make it universal.

I worked probably fewer jobs than most people, or fewer real soul-killing jobs than other people. I've been a typist, a typesetter, a keyliner, cappuccino-maker. I think I've been pretty lucky.

My donkeys are Jack and Don Quixote. They're very smart, very cautious. Much of what people consider stubbornness in donkeys is actually cautiousness.

As a writer, I can live somewhat independently, occupying nooks and crannies and finding meaning there. I can even live in my mind a good portion of most days.

That's where I live, a junkyard in a neighborhood of junkyards. We have three tractors from the 1940s and '50s, several old pickup trucks, and a pile of scrap metal.

I have a second-degree black belt in Okinawan kobudo weapons training.

Time is never wasted coming to an old man bar.

I grew up with donkeys, as well as horses, but I'm more interested in donkeys.

Where I live you're not supposed to shoot a firearm within a quarter mile of a dwelling.

I live my daydreams in music I see my life in terms of music. I get most joy in life out of music.

Reciprocity of sensation is not possible because to share is to be robbed.

WHEN we don't get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don't blame the soldiers.

The older I get, the more I lose my ability to breathe.

Acting is telling the truth under imaginary circumstances. I cannot think of a worse way to describe acting. Also, I'm the worst liar ever.

Not believing in something doesn't make it not exist.

Words really flattering are not those which we prepare but those which escape us unthinkingly.

It's painful to listen to the barking of dogs.

If you are not curious, that's when your brain is starting to die. And discovering, I think, that's what separates us from the rest of the other species. It's that we discover and pioneer.