I look up the telephone number of Alcoholics Anonymous. Then, my hands shaking, I open the bar and drink the leftover whiskey, gin and vermouth-whatever I can lay my shaking hands on.

A lonely man is a lonesome thing, a stone, a bone, a stick, a receptacle for Gilbey's gin, a stooped figure sitting at the edge of a hotel bed, heaving copious sighs like the autumn wind.

It was a splendid summer morning and it seemed as if nothing could go wrong.

All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.

That's the way I remember them, heading for an exit.

Fear tastes like a rusty knife and do not let her into your house.

Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream.

Art is the triumph over chaos.

Homesickness is nothing. Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the time.

I've been homesick for countries I've never been, and longed to be where I couldn't be.

Then it is dark; it is a night where kings in golden suits ride elephants over the mountains.

I am philosophical Christ

Don’t feed your body and keep your spirit starving. Butter bread for your body and living bread for your spirit. Read the Bible every day and keep your spirit away from hunger.

Self-governing cultures both inspire alignment and eject elements that don't fit in.

The heart of a good mother is as big as the ocean

Every breath is a battle between grudgery and gratitude. Give thanks...and you win joy.

Truth is something you stumble into when you think you're going someplace else.

Just do what you like to do, and do it all the time.

I am not throwing away my shot.

Linguistics becomes an ever eerier area, like I feel like I'm in Oz, Just trying to tell it like it was.

The world feels overwhelming to me on every level. Just the number of organisms that live on this planet. Our politics, our violence, psychology, emotions; there's just a lot going on, right?