I've always traveled. I'm a professor in a limited way. I teach one class two quarters out of four, so I get traveling done..

Being in the presence of the "other" seems to show me who I am in a way that is really important to me. I feel radically more comfortable in Laos, sa….

There was something about the prairie for me—it wasn’t where I had come from, but when I moved there it just took me in and I knew I couldn’t ever st….

Do you write novels?" I said. "Novels, Lord no," she said. "I can't even stay married..

Life gives us what we need when we need it; receiving what it gives us is a whole other thing..

There's this great Ron Carlson story, "A Note on the Type," and it's about this guy who keeps escaping from prison. He's really good at escaping, but….

I wanted her to see that the only life worth living is a life full of love; that loss is always part of the equation; that love and loss conjoined ar….

Sometimes no matter how well you prepare, no matter how conservative your decision making, no matter how few Y chromosomes are along on your trip, yo….

Movement helps keep me centered. I am a disaster, for instance, at sitting meditation, but I'm pretty decent at walking meditation..

Stillness is a harder concept for me than ecstasy, but I can imagine it best when I am fully present and paying strict attention to a place I am movi….

I always tell my students, about the biggest baddest things in life you must try to write small and light, save the big writing for the unexpected ti….

I always think, when I'm in motion, writing seems like the most natural thing..

I write really well on the road..

There are three principles to remember if you are to teach a human being anything, and they are consistency, consistency, consistency.They are such f….

Dogs change lives. Half Buddha, half Bozo, they keep us tethered to the earth, and teach us to fly. Our dogs are our sanity keepers..

Give me a labyrinth to walk and I can usually free my mind..

I've been to a lot of school and read a lot of thick books, but at my very core there's a made-for-TV-movie mentality I don't think i will ever shake..

People are supposed to accumulate, I thought, as they get older, but I seem to be sloughing off, like a person wrapped in a hundred layers of celloph….

in general, I feel most comfortable between known quantities..

Sometimes I'm writing for magazines on assignment, but the university has to be patient with me. I mean, during the ten-week periods that I have a cl….

Every day at about four o'clock, I would go up to a farmhouse - or whatever kind of house was around - and knock on the door and say, "Hi, I'm biking….