Literature can teach us how to live before we live, and how to die before we die. I believe that writing is practice for death, and for every (other) transformation human beings encounter.

Towns change; they grow or diminish, but hometowns remain as we left them.

Love is the outlaw's duty.

If death is this brilliant slide, this high, fine music felt as pure vibration, this plunging float in wind and silence, it's not so bad.

The writing life is a secret life, wither we admit it or not.

Smoke veils the air like souls in drifting suspension, declining the war's insistence everyone move on.

Then he's inside you, and your body remembers, each time, every man, even if you try to forget.

Talk between women friends is always therapy.

The writer's first affinity is not to a loyalty, a tradition, a morality, a religion, but to life itself, and to its representation in language.

I write line by line, by the sound and the weight and the music of the words.

I wish I had more time to write.

You're not completely alone, you have me! Even if the entire world turns its back on you, you'll still be the strongest as long as you have me!

Machinery which is not used is not capital.

I adore my dad. He's a 78-year-old man and my inspiration.

An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.

Life has become unbearable ... Forgive me.

I grew up in Orange County, California, all over the beaches of San Clemente and that area.

There is no love without sacrifices.

It feels good to be awake, knowing others are asleep. Makes you feel like the night is not for everyone, just a chosen few.

Finding like-minded people is very important. It's hard to be a happy meal in a room full of sad people.

so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.