For men who had easily endured hardship, danger and difficult uncertainty, leisure and riches, though in some ways desirable, proved burdensome and a source of grief.

What a beautiful morning.

Getting old is not for sissies.

Dreaming permits every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.

Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-ight drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.

We can begin by noting that the body prefers to keep itself alive.

Jean Paul Sartre says in "No Exit" that hell is other people. Well, our task in life is to make it heaven. Or at least earth.

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

America, meaning mostly the United States, is not an easy concept to comprehend. It may be appropriate that it was discovered by a Genoese sailor, in the service of the Spanish crown, looking for some place else and that, for the next half-century, it was treated as a geological impediment to be gotten through or around in order to reach some far more profitable other side.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.