When I go train hopping and I look up into the sky, there are always so many more stars than I remember there were.

Maybe life is a process of trading hopes for memories.

Can you understand your own dreams, which arise with mushrooms' rank richness in the night-forests within your skull?

Death is ordinary. Behold it, subtract its patterns and lessons from those of the death that weapons bring, and maybe the residue will show what violence is.

Just for the hell of it, try to love someone as unlike you as possible.

Death cannot be experienced either by the dead or the living.

The instant people specialize, its in their interest to dehumanize the people their specialized function operates upon.

[Ernest ]Hemingway always said, "Write about what you know." I think you can do that, and if you want to write about what you don't know, you can. It just takes a lot more work.

At least I hope - that the fiction I've written so far has flaws but has mostly been successful.

I feel like I'm almost ready to write fiction about the border. But even after 10 years of writing nonfiction about it, I don't think I know quite enough to do it right.

There will come a time when nobody reads my books and no one remembers who I was. And in the meantime, I'll do it my way.

So Shakespeare stole

To some extent, Seattle remains a frontier metropolis, a place where people can experiment with their lives, and change and grow and make things happen.

You can change a person in their exterior aspects, but the soul remains, it still is there, and especially if that person has been changed involuntarily.

There is not going to be any pass for Palestinian leadership in fighting terror.

How could such a large door be kept secret from everybody outside, apart from the dragon?" [Bilbo] asked. He was only a little hobbit you must remember.

I believe in love, but I don't sit around waiting for it. I buy houses.

Never take your position for granted and never let any favors you receive go to your head.

I usually get my stuff from people who promised somebody else that they would keep it a secret.

'Keep England White' is a good slogan.