The intelligence of the mind can't think of any reason to live, but it goes on anyway because the intelligence of the cells can't think of any reason to die.

The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality.

When you live in the shadow of insanity, the appearance of another mind that thinks and talks as yours does is something close to a blessed event.

To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.

The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.

One of the most moral acts is to create a space in which life can move forward.

Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value.

The truth knocks on the door and you say, go away, I'm looking for the truth, and it goes away. Puzzling.

My favorite piece of technical writing: Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind.

Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions.

Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster.

Human beings are consistent with regard to codes of honor, but endlessly fickle with regard to whom those codes apply. E.N. Wilson

It had been a couple of years and I was neither dead, nor undead, which I ranked as an achievement.

...up to no good—and pleased about it.

I've always been stimulated by the sense of challenge.

Don't be ashamed of your own ideas. Most musicians get applauded for sounding like someone else.

I studied anthropology and art history, as I have always been captivated by living traditions.

People are interested in crime fiction when they're quite distanced from crime. People in Darfur are not reading murder mysteries.

Everything I do now is about growing the pot to have more to give away.

I've never written about my husband, Steve, or any of my children because I know them all too well. I see them in all their complexities which makes them impossible to render on the printed page.

Most organisations have a serial bully. It never ceases to amaze me how one person's divisive dysfunctional behaviour can permeate the entire organisation like a cancer.