In a regular class I don't focus on the form, but I think that focus is helpful for brainstorming and coming up with ideas quickly, especially with autobiographical material.

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.

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

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.

I will not give up my dream for someone's dream.

My heart is your home, wherever in the world you are – you will always have a place to stay.

I wish to become rich so that I can instruct the people and glorify honest poverty a little like those kind-hearted fat benevolent people do.

When we judge, we create negative karma. When we say of an action: 'This is right,' or, 'That is wrong,' we create negative karma.

Nothing fine and noble will ever perish from the earth as long as there are hearts to remember.

A TREAT. FASCINATING. Director Lipes is a classic cinéma vérité practitioner in the mold of Albert Maysles and Frederick Wiseman.

Wealth is what you take from the world; worth is what you give back.

Loving a woman is always political.

To accept on faith is the basic requirement for getting on with life.

...They cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.