I had a spell no more striking than other people of my job description. I did all the things you weren't supposed to do. I had a motto: When in doubt, try it. I went out and committed experience.
Summertime in Montana, I become a monosyllabic baboon. I want to ride with the cowboys, go to brandings, doctor cattle, and train my horses. But in a few months, the snow starts to fly. The days become shorter; the yellow color of interior light becomes delicious. I look at my shelves, and every book just glows, and I want to be inside of that.
I've outlived my parents, and I've had some wonderful second chances in life. I feel remarkably uncheated.
I really do love 'Panama.' But I'd also have to admit that right now, if I were driven to write another novel like that, I wouldn't even try to find a publisher for it. It simply wouldn't be published. I'd be writing it to put in my closet upstairs.
You reach a point at which you have to view your life through the things you've spent so much time doing. The alternative is a perilous feeling of waste.
I'm always surprised to rediscover that there's something kind of scary about life; and that the feeling we have that we're in charge is probably ill founded.
I wrote a lot of 'Driving on the Rim' by giving myself the gift of being just as eccentric as I felt like.
I'm certainly afraid of not being able to write for some reason. I guess I've had spells of not necessarily writer's block, but something like that. I find that pretty terrifying.
I had a passionate zest for Key West life in all of its little details. I'm not sure why or where that came from, but I was so excited to be there.
