The prospect of a long day at the beach makes me panic. There is no harder work I can think of than taking myself off to somewhere pleasant, where I am forced to stay for hours and 'have fun'.

Hedonism can be a rational response to a difficult life.

The essay must be artistically rendered: You must keep the reader engaged, whether with wit, conflict, mischief, and/or yes, with honesty.

Until people see poetry as springing from all of life, they will isolate it in a creativity corner and treat it like a mascot.

Most good essays are conversations with yourself - not just your decided thoughts but your dilemmas.

The trick is to realize that one is not important, except insofar as one’s example can serve to elucidate a more widespread human trait and make readers feel a little less lonely and freakish.

A personal essay often includes some or a lot of personal confession. That makes the reader feel less lonely in their confusion and darkness.

Have fun writing, because it enhances both the writer's and reader's experience.

Confession makes you a more trustworthy narrator.

In new work, we need to see the shadow, however faint, of previous literary effort.

I am apt to be harsh in my secret judgments of others, seeing them as defective because they are not enough like me.

Get thee to the novel! - the novel, that word-woven submarine, piloted by intimation and intuition, that will dive you to the deeps of the heart's maelstrom.

...in an infinite universe, anything that could be imagined might somewhere exist.

I always see the crack in the glass before I see the window.

Technology is the fashion of the '90s. It affects everyone, and everyone is interested in it - either from fear of being left behind or because they have a real need to use technology.

Flatter not thyself in thy faith in God if thou hast not charity for thy neighbor.

That which makes the vanity of others unbearable to us is that which wounds our own.

The Buddha would never speak about enlightenment. The way he taught people about enlightenment was they meditated with him. He exposed them to countless views of the nagual.

I always felt at home with Krishna. You see it was already a part of me. I think it's something that's been with me from my previous birth.

Only - only that, if you believe the tales, it's in the nature of our people to go to war and to kill, just as it is to sing and play and tell stories. Perhaps they are two halves of the same whole.

A woman isn't complete without a man. But where do you find a man - a real man - these days?