If I could live as a tree, as a river, as the moon, as the sun, as a star, as the earth, as a rock, I would. ...Writing permits me to experience life as any number of strange creations.

I love the natural world - it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

You are saying, are you not, I said to Manuelito, that stories have more room in them than ideas? [...] He laughed. That is correct, Señor. It is as if ideas are made of blocks. Rigid and hard. And stories are made of a gauze that is elastic. You can almost see through it, so what is beyond is tantalizing. You can't quite make it out; and because the imagination is always moving forward, you yourself are constantly stretching. Stories are the way spirit is exercised.

Always with me was the inner twin: my true nature, my true self. It is timeless, free, compassionate and in love with whatever is natural to me

My God is not a religious God. My God is nature, my God is everything there is. That's God. Everything is God. I'm a child of that.

Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories.

Activism is the rent I pay for living on this planet.