Don't try to outguess what's going on in publishing, and write what you want to write.

You do not have to explain every single drop of water contained in a rain barrel. You have to explain one drop-H2O. The reader will get it.

Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk-away from any open flames-to remind yourself that if you don't write daily, you will get rusty.

One day we will all cherish the memory of having blacksmiths on every corner.

There's a ton of truth in Flannery O'Connor's notion that "Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days."

I have to deal with seven ex-stray dogs, and one ex-stray cat. One dog is nearing nineteen years old. Before I go to teach, he likes for me to tell him bedtime stories.

Gilles Deleuze believed that every society needed a madman so we could feel better about ourselves. I do my best to fill that role.

I don't smoke because I like to do so, but because it makes me pay cigarette taxes, which helps build roads and water supplies.

Think about all the selfish non-smokers out there, driving around on asphalt, drinking water out of the tap, not even thinking about how smokers' taxes help pay for it all.

You cannot solve a problem in the same frequency in which it was created.

The flip side of the coin of which Good and Evil are but one side.

I had never really thought of marriages as things that involved liking. I had just assumed this man-woman arrangement was yet another adult quirk, like flossing.

The labour Party has lost the last four elections. If they lose another, they get to keep the liberal party.

You must push everything to the absolute limit or else life will be boring.

All phenomena link together in a mutually conditioning network.

If you can't stand a little sacrifice and you can't stand a trip across the desert with limited water, we're never going to straighten this country out.

I was always inventing characters and making up stories.

I don't mind paying people more for something if we're getting more. But just to change a deal because you're greedy and you want more? No. I'm not gonna go along with that.

An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.