I enjoy going to campuses and reading and doing a class or teaching and then running away and not having to grade papers.

Oh, a bookshop. Why not pop in and buy a little Kant? And perhaps just a quarter-pound of Kafka. Don't bother to wrap it, thanks. I'll eat it here.

Good art is a form of prayer. It's a way to say what is not sayable.

Baseball is a game where you are always waiting, and then when something happens it's like turning a kaleidoscope when you were a kid.

I love thrillers. I would even read certain science fiction, although I haven't been a devotee for many years.

There is a lack of context in contemporary education. And contemporary consideration - because we live in those interiorities so much. Especially young kids who live by surfing the Web.

I love baseball. What I love about baseball is that you are always waiting.

The best defense is a good story.

Never use 'submit' as a verb for sending work to magazine or book publishers; say 'offer,' and never, ever submit. Keep your knees unbent. Be brave.

What to know about pain is how little we do to deserve it, how simple it is to give, how hard to lose.

I have found myself writing poetry shortly after I retired. Which I hadn't done in forty years.

Freedom is the most precious property

How can you see into my eyes like open doorsLeading you down into my coreWhere I've become so numb without a soulMy spirit sleeping somewhere coldUntil you find it there and lead it back home

If I had a view like this to look down on every day, I would have the energy and inspiration to conquer the world. The trouble is, when you most need such a view, no one gives it to you.

Life is either a great adventure or nothing.

I'm an investor in a number of biotech companies, partly because of my incredible enthusiasm for the great innovations they will bring.

Palin is smart, politically skilled, courageous and likable. Her convention and debate performances were impressive.

All of us are displaced. Few people live where their great-grandparents lived or speak the language their great-grandparents spoke.

I inhabit a weak, frail, decayed tenement; battered by the winds and broken in on by the storms, and, from all I can learn, the landlord does not intend to repair.

I live and breathe every element in life.

All authors secretly hope that their works will be read in 100 years' time and 200 years, and that they will somehow survive into the future.