I grew up with donkeys, as well as horses, but I'm more interested in donkeys.

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.

Where I live you're not supposed to shoot a firearm within a quarter mile of a dwelling.

We are never separated. Our hearts are connected with a threadless garland called love.

Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.

One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.

No one should say whether others should breed or not, that would go against how I feel a woman has the right to choose. Everyone has the right to feel regret.

My goal at every tournament is to finish top 18. At the end of the year if I could finish every tournament top 18, that would be pretty good.

My grandpa was a preacher.

To forget the elderly is to ignore the wisdom of the years.

Let him who has once perceived how much that, which has been discarded, excels that which he has longed for, return at once, and seek again that which he despised.

Correction of Earlier Entry: 8/01/12We read over the shoulders of giants; books place us in dialogue not just with an author but with other readers.

I used to write stories and poetry, but for some reason I have it in my head that if I'm going to write, I have to write a script.