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'Ulysses' is like a big box of tricks that you can dive into. Each time you read it, you find something new.

Happy the man who, like Ulysses, has made a fine voyage, or has won the Golden Fleece, and then returns, experienced and knowledgeable, to spend the rest of his life among his family.

The history of all the great characters of the Bible is summed up in this one sentence: They acquainted themselves with God, and acquiesced His will in all things.

Modern storytellers are the descendants of an immense and ancient community of holy people, troubadours, bards, griots, cantadoras, cantors, traveling poets, bums, hags, and crazy people.

In one book, CACHALOT, just for my own amusement, every character is based directly on someone I have known.

True stories, autobiographical stories, like some novels, begin long ago, before the acts in the account, before the birth of some of the people in the tale.

In 'Dublinesque', Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas inverts the terms of Joyce's 'Ulysses' and tells the story of a man who, after living a hyperkinetic life like those of Odysseus and Leopold Bloom, resolves to never leave his room again and to reduce his mental activity to a minimum.

My favorite books are actually very complicated - 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', 'Ulysses'.

It is an ancient need to be told stories. But the story needs a great storyteller. Thanks for all of it, Jo.

If you think of all the enduring stories in the world, they're of journeys. Whether it's 'Don Quixote' or 'Ulysses,' there's always this sense of a quest - of a person going away to be tested, and coming back.