A schedule defends from chaos and whim.

An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" "No," said the priest, "not if you did not know." "Then why," asked the Inuit earnestly, "did you tell me?"

Eskimo: Then why did you tell me?

You can’t test courage cautiously.

We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.

A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.

You have to take pains in a memoir not to hang on the reader’s arm, like a drunk, and say, “And then I did this and it was so interesting.”

One of the few things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book, give it, give it all, give it now.