When I was eight years old I got a dummy for Christmas and started teaching myself. I got books and records and sat in front of the bathroom mirror practising. I did my first show in the third grade and just kept going there was no reason to quit.

For a long time all I wanted for Christmas were books about outdoor survival. I was convinced that the woods were calling me. I camped a lot I took classes. At 18 I told myself if I don't live in the woods by myself by the time I'm 25 I have failed.

The difference between people who believe they have books inside of them and those who actually write books is sheer cussed persistence - the ability to make yourself work at your craft every day - the belief even in the face of obstacles that you've got something worth saying.

Americans like fat books and thin women.

Something about glamour interested me. All my schoolbooks had drawings of women on terraces with a cocktail and a cigarette.

Books give not wisdom where none was before. But where some is there reading makes it more.

Books should to one of these fours ends conduce for wisdom piety delight or use.

But I do think it's important to remember that writers do not have a monopoly of wisdom on their books. They can be wrong about their own books they can often learn about their own books.

Books are the ever burning lamps of accumulated wisdom.

Who knows for what we live and struggle and die? Wise men write many books in words too hard to understand. But this the purpose of our lives the end of all our struggle is beyond all human wisdom.