Once you publish a book, it is out of your control. You cannot dictate how people read it.

But nothing is more opaque than absolute transparency.

I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one 'race' - the human race - and that we are all members of it.

Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.

Canada was built on dead beavers.

A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you.

We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.

You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.

Nature is to zoos as God is to churches.

If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia.

Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.

I've never done this with a woman like you before. Never wanted to. I only know... I don't want it to end.

If you are afraid for your future you don't have a present.

I did this night promise my wife never to go to bed without calling upon God upon my knees in prayer.

You can open to the idea that whatever happened to you in the past eventually turned out or will turn out to be a benefit to you.

If you can't play the Blues you might as well hang it up.

Cliches and adjectives permeated my prose.

I told the students [at Yale] we were going to talk about love - I meant love in the sense of devotions to one's work - and about half the students got really pissed off.

Know what the best thing about insomnia is? That I get to stay up all night figuring it out.

When it all comes together, a creative life has the nourishing power we normally associate with food, love and faith.

I am what is around me.