I was never a big reader as a kid. My imagination wasn't captured by books very often. It was captured more often by boys and partying and riding horses.

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.

Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.

The human consciousness is really homogeneous. There is no complete forgetting, even in death.

I found it stimulating to study the sciences. It was a side of understanding the universe that I hadn't been exposed to.

We distinguish the excellent man from the common man by saying that the former is the one who makes great demands on himself, and the latter who makes no demands on himself.

Since every death diminishes us a little, we grieve - not so much for the death as for ourselves.

'Champagne' and 'breathmint' are the first two words all Oscar winners hear.

Know that ever about you stands the reality of love, and each moment you have the power to transform your world by what you have learned.

In taking life for granted, we fail to notice it.

Our very eyes Are sometimes, like our judgments, blind.

You have to experiment and that's gonna help your confidence so much when you step out and try things.