Sometimes it can feel like the whole globe is spinning with irredeemable losses, capricious natural disasters and crimes so outrageously evil they dismantle any attempt to solve or explain them.

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.

Dostoevsky was made by being sent to Siberia. Writers are forged in injustice as a sword is forged.

In the village, a sage should go about Like a bee, which, not harmingFlower, colour or scent, Flies off with the nectar.

Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself.

I think the only thing that I really haven't done much in, and I haven't felt too attracted to, is romantic comedies.

The Olympics are great. For two weeks we become absolutely fascinated in these people we've never heard of before and will never think of again.

The Olympic games should be a matter between individual athletes and the gods. Noisy flag-waving dishonors gods and men alike.

Things turn out better by accident sometimes. But you can't organize accidents.

Democracy is the superior form of government, because it is based on a respect for man as a reasonable being.

Always someone resting there - a lone rock in the summer field

Maybe I'm just getting old, but I remember when your average NFL player would come to the sideline, spit out three bicuspids, Scotch-tape his humerus together and get back out there.