“It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.”

South Dakota… is like the world’s first drive-through sensory deprivation chamber.

There are things you just can’t do in life. You can’t beat the phone company, you can’t make a waiter see you until he’s ready to see you, and you can’t go home again.

Woods are not like other spaces. To begin with, they are cubic. Their trees surround you, loom over you, press in from all sides. Woods choke off views & leave you muddled & without bearings.

I have three kids, the oldest is 18 and her friends are going to see it The Aristocrats because they told her they’re going to see it, especially her guy friends.

To me, the greatest invention of my lifetime is the laptop computer and the fact that I can be working on a book and be in an airport lounge, in a hotel room, and continue working; I fire up my laptop, and I’m in exactly the same place I was when I left home – that, to me, is a miracle.

Therefore, I think that in the celebration of the 50 years of the present reign, there must be research on the changes that the country has undergone, and in the future, it could be used as a lesson for our future actions.

What is it about maps? I could look at them all day, earnestly studying the names of towns and villages I have never heard of and will never visit.

Every dog on the face of the earth wants me dead.

The writer’s life: Hard days, lots of work, no money, too much silence. Nobody’s fault. You chose it.

To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.

A tiny bundle of genetic material passed from one living entity to another, and has never stopped moving since. It was the moment of creation for us all.

Falling out of a posture means you are human; getting back into the posture means you are a yogi.

Absolute brain size does not tell you everything or possibly sometimes even much. Elephants and whales both have brains larger than ours, but you wouldn’t have much trouble outwitting them in contract negotiations.

Now they are a little like those desperate junkies who have tried every known drug and are finally reduced to mainlining toilet bowl cleanser in an effort to get still higher.

Every kid I knew had a father with a little stash of men’s magazines which the father thought was secret and which the kid knew all about.

An awful lot of England is slowly eroding, in ways that I find really distressing, and an awful lot of it is the hedgerows…

If at first you don’t succeed. You can dust it off and try again. Dust yourself off and try again.

The troubles of our proud and angry dust are from eternity, and shall not fail. Bear them we can, and if we can we must. Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

This is my soul skin. Born from the dust, blooming from within.

What is man? Hope turned to dust. No. What is man? Dust turned to hope.

Just like dust, we settle in this town.

I grabbed a pile of dust, and holding it up, foolishly asked for as many birthdays as the grains of dust, I forgot to ask that they be years of youth.

It tastes like gold, and everything before then felt like dust. Everytime they question how beautiful your love Is.

I am as a speck of dust in the sun, and not even so much, in this solemn, mysterious, unknowable universe.