“I saw my earlier selves as different people, acquaintances I had outgrown. I wondered how I could ever have been some of them.”

“Nobody steals books but your friends.”

“To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, "I wish I had known this some time ago.”

“There's no such thing as civilization. The word just means the art of living in cities.”

“It was almost a mystical experience. I do not know how else to put it. My mind outran time as he neared, and it was as though I had an eternity to ponder the approach of this man who was my brother...”

“I watched the spinning stars, grateful, sad and proud, as only a man who has outlived his destiny and realizes he might yet forge himself another, can be.”

“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection”

“I read once that the ancient Egyptians had fifty words for sand & the Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. I wish I had a thousand words for love, but all that comes to mind is the way you move ag...”

“Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze. ”

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”