The truth is I tried to write for years and I wasn't very good.

Donkeys are the most misunderstood and abused animals around the world.

I think by writing about a place with great specificity, you manage to make it universal.

I worked probably fewer jobs than most people, or fewer real soul-killing jobs than other people. I've been a typist, a typesetter, a keyliner, cappuccino-maker. I think I've been pretty lucky.

My donkeys are Jack and Don Quixote. They're very smart, very cautious. Much of what people consider stubbornness in donkeys is actually cautiousness.

As a writer, I can live somewhat independently, occupying nooks and crannies and finding meaning there. I can even live in my mind a good portion of most days.

A mathematical proof is beautiful, but when you're finished, it's really only about one thing. A story can be about many things.

That's where I live, a junkyard in a neighborhood of junkyards. We have three tractors from the 1940s and '50s, several old pickup trucks, and a pile of scrap metal.

I have a second-degree black belt in Okinawan kobudo weapons training.

Time is never wasted coming to an old man bar.

I grew up with donkeys, as well as horses, but I'm more interested in donkeys.

Find someone who has a life that you want and figure out how they got it. Read books, pick your role models wisely. Find out what they did and do it.

I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

An accurate knowledge of the past of a country is necessary for everyone who would understand its present, and who desires to judge of its future.

I deal with foreign countries. I made a lot of money dealing against China. I've made a lot of money dealing against many other countries.

I am sick of atrocities, though these are now the natural order of our world. And I would still like to act!

Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.

Present thinking people kill the future.

When I start thinking, all is lost.

It's important to be willing to make mistakes. The worst thing that can happen is you become memorable.

You risked the cub? (Dev) He’s not just a cub. (Aimee) You’re right. He’s the passenger who fell off the short bus. (Dev)