I do different work, teaching and running around visiting universities and bookstores, and that prevents me from writing. But it's nice to be wanted as a writer.

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.

When you are angry, be still and do not speak.

We need to sharpen our focus & live to the point just like a pencil.

I'm always telling young designers to take the time to surround themselves with women.

The voice of humility is God's music, and the silence of humility is God's rhetoric.

When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.

If I can change, anybody can change.

Conservatives aren't anti-immigrant - conservatives are pro-legal immigration.

I won't lie. Walking into a room and seeing your girlfriend reading a baby-name book can kind of make your heart stop.

Everyone is fighting like crazy because it's the last Grand Slam. When you play the Grand Slams, you just have to give everything you have.

We're living in an increasingly nationalistic, xenophobic time, and you can see it reflected in societies all over the world.