Originality consists in trying to be like everybody else --and failing.

It was then I realized that no one can escape his age, and that my dangerous contempt had melted like ice the moment someone was kind enough to show they cared about me, and in a way that suited me.

People here always said to me, 'Why would you leave civilization to go to a place like Fiji?' Fiji is a far more civilized place than California or New York City.

Hope is simply an anchor that we hold on to, as a way of envisioning the brightness of our future.

The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring.

For a long time I wanted to do the kind of work my dad did. He was going to ask his foreman at the mill to put me on after I graduated. So I worked at the mill for about six months. But I hated the work and knew from the first day I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life.