“Quietly they moved down the calm and sacred river that had come down to earth so that its waters might flow over the ashes of those long dead, and that would continue to flow long after the human race had, through hatred and knowledge, burned itself out.”

I am certainly not allergic to causes – particularly on subjects such as religious intolerance.

Dear though the reader might be, I’d be silly to cater to what the reader wanted.

Don’t put things off till it’s too late. You are the DJ of your fate.

Think of many things. Never place your happiness in one person’s power. Be just to yourself.

In a painting, you can’t make out whether the artist painted the left eye before the right eye. In Chinese calligraphy, you can see the progression of the artist’s stroke.

For a writer, obsession is a good substitute for self-discipline.

I think if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. And worth thinking about it as well.

I think goodness is about how person behaves to person, and also person to world, to nature.

You can talk good ideas out of existence.

God save us from people who mean well.

I don’t pick and choose subjects or settings; they pick and choose me.

To not be able to love the one you love is to have your life wrenched away.

The past is the past, and he can’t make amends, only hope that the gain will outlast the damage.

I spent many years of my life as an economist and demographer. I was finally distracted by writing my novels and poetry. I’m enormously happy that was the case. I feel that with writing I have found my metier.

In life’s brief game to be a winner A man must have; oh yes, above All else, of course, someone to love.

I’m not sure anyone can understand a whole life, even their own.

Trust can burn bridges and as easily burn them down, don’t play with it.

These bridges that we walk across they weren’t build to be burned.

The sky is on fire I am, too cigarette burns on my faded tattoo.

We burn incandescent memories lungs aching with washed-out oxygen as if we weren’t to meet again.

His love set her on fire and she loved the way it burned.

Dry throat on the days I’d rather just watch the candle burn.

The lava that erupts from the volcanoes has been reoccurring for far too long and even tho I’ve been warned that my lava can burn others I can’t help but erupt at the possibility that someone will want to burn for me.

Don’t be a match to someone else’s candle because, in the end, you’ll both burn out.