I like to go where the life is.

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.

They say any landing you can walk away from is a good one.

Everyone thinks their whole life should be at least as much fun as masturbation.

You look back and see how hard you worked and how poor you were, and how desperately anxious you were to succeed, and all you can remember is how happy you were.

When someone has the wit to coin a useful phrase, it ought to be acclaimed and broadcast or it will perish.

I love people who are real.

And for ego, to accept that you have ego is the only way and then it will drop out. If you know there is ego, ego will drop out.

Where there's a will - there's a relative!

I defended myself at the first opportunity I had, which was a meeting of writers in which I proved that Honecker had based his whole attack.

Happiness is an immunity.

Study with desire is real activity; without desire it is but the semblance and mockery of activity.