I loved writing for the school newspaper. I liked to report and interview people, but I really liked to write columns, funny columns.

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.

If I could always read I should never feel the want of company.

I'm living in a world of goldfish.

Never will I give my hand where my heart does not accompany it.

Making every record is a process full of tough times.

Doctor told me I've got two weeks to live. I said: "Can I have the last week in July and the 1st week in August?"

No matter what you do, you're going to have people who have something to say about something you do. You can't please anybody.

I'm the true definition of a workaholic.

Naïveté, thy name is me.

So every creative act strives to attain an absolute status; it longs to create a world of beauty to triumph over chaos and convert it to order.

We continually use stories to hold up as mirrors to ourselves.