it is discouraging to leave the past behind only to see it coming toward you like the thunderstorm which drenched you yesterday.

The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.

Blue is therefore most suitable as the color of interior life.

Sports, politics, and religion are the three passions of the badly educated.

It’s not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word

For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier stock.

I am unlikely to trust a sentence that comes easily.

I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.

The expression to write something down suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it.

The speeding reader guts a book the way the skillful clean fish. The gills are gone, the tail, the scales, the fins; then the fillet slides away swifly as though fed to a seal.

What else is soul but a listener?

Loving the same man or woman all your life, why, that's like supposing the same candle could last you all your life

Fear left unrestrained always leaves us running ‘from’ something. Fear harnessed compels us to run ‘to’ something. And fear denied leaves us running in circles.

There's something about water that washes away the cares of the mind and heart.

To make a man happy fill his hands with work his heart with affection his mind with purpose his memory with useful knowledge his future with hope and his stomach with food.

My expertise is running businesses.

My mother was working a lot, so she was gone often. I would leave school and hitchhike to the beach. I can't believe I hitchhiked now. It scares me to death now.

Parents must refuse to cooperate with any psychological evaluation of their children in school.

Man City needed something and when Johnson did something, something happened

The other man's arse is always cleaner!

I admire Grover Norquist. I think hes done a lot of good.