I think that's the real horror story for me, how little you can ever really know about your own motivations. How in the dark we all are about the concerns and the contents of our minds.

The beginning of the end can feel a lot like the middle when you are living in it.

When you're a kid, it's hard to tell the innocuous secrets from the ones that will kill you if you keep them.

Fiction helps me to reconnect with the true, deep weirdness inherent in everyday reality, in our dealings with one another, in just being alive.

It was sad and fierce all at once, alive with a lonely purity.

My older sister has entire kingdoms inside of her, and some of them are only accessible at certain seasons, in certain kinds of weather.

I spent most of my 20s with these alligator wrestlers in the swamps of South Florida.

It is a special kind of homelessness to be evicted from your dreams.

Self-disciplin e is necessary, but so is playfulness, flexibility, joy. When you stop demanding perfection of yourself, your writing desk will become a spacious place.

There are certain prehistoric things that swim beyond extinction.

You small mortals don't realize the power of your stories.

It's funny how cucumber water can taste so much better than pickle juice, even though they come from the same source.

The hope crashes into reality and people get hurt.

Have you ever been further away than yourself? Where?

I am only a picture-taster, the way others are wine-or tea-tasters.

Ingenious to their ruin, every age improves the art and instruments of rage.

Never drink if you've got any work to do. Never.

Everywhere that a great soul gives utterance to its thoughts, there also is a Golgotha.

How do you make a small fortune in the wine business? Start with a large fortune and buy a winery.

Every act of kindness on your part is a boost to your own immune system.

Do not say we are weak; we can do anything and everything. What can we not do? Everything can be done by us; we all have the same glorious soul, let us believe in it.