She pulls away, pats me on the shoulder with three mini-pats, like those used to pet reptiles.

We are unusual and tragic and alive.

I met a lot of great people in Saudi Arabia and I'd like to see them again. And I'd love to spend more time in the desert and in the mountains. I felt really at home there.

Dignity is an affectation, cute but eccentric, like learning French or collecting scarves.

We must do extraordinary things. We have to. It would be absurd not to.

Books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying: Let’s not forget this.

Better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to climb than in the middle of some ladder you don’t, right?

Here I am Rock You Like a Hurricane.

Again the greatest use of a human was to be useful. Not to consume, not to watch, but to do something for someone else that improved their life, even for a few minutes.

But everyone disappears, no matter who loves them.

Pain comes at me and I take it, chew it for a few minutes, and spit it back out. It's just not my thing anymore.

Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.

You can’t afford anthropomorphic biases when some of the aliens most like us would rather make human hamburgers than peace.

Just because you don't know what you want yet, it doesn't mean that there's nothing to want.

If four things are followed - having a great aim, acquiring knowledge, hard work, and perseverance - then anything can be achieved.

I don't have friends, I have thousands of acquaintances. No friends. I figured I had a wife and children.

I want to draw subjects that seem very boring and everyday... Stuff that would be normal except for one thing. Or two things. Or stuff that's undeniably weird.

The Falklands held a mirror up to our own islands, and it reflected, in brilliantly sharp focus, all our injured belittlement, our sense of being beleaguered, neglected and misunderstood.

Whatever else India may not be, she is at least one thing, She is the greatest storehouse of spiritual knowledge.

I live in Florida, and I live on a small lagoon. I sit and look out at the water all day - that's what my desk is.

When we are expecting only suffering, the least joy surprises us: Suffering itself becomes the greatest of joys when we seek it as a precious treasure.