"If you're a misanthrope you stay at home. There are certain writers who really don't like other people. I'm not like that, I don't think."

"Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art."

"A travel book is about someone who goes somewhere, travels on the ground, sees something and spends quite a lot of time doing it, and has a hard time, and then comes back and writes about it. It's not about inventing."

"When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call, but I wrote letters, I wrote short stories, I wrote books."

"My wife met me at the door the other night in a sexy negligee. Unfortunately, she was just coming home."

"Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then."

"It may be that the satisfaction I need depends on my going away, so that when I've gone and come back, I'll find it at home."

"My wife and I just prefer Seattle. It's a beautiful city. Great setting. You open your front door in the morning and the air smells like pine and the sea, as opposed to bus exhaust."