If you have this deep feeling of empathy for the natural world, you feel it so profoundly. It's almost a religious experience. I feel that I could never really say the depth of feeling or connection I feel to the natural world, which has made me.

I think you have to live inside your contradictions and find a way to accept that that's the human condition - to be forced to live in contradiction.

Life seems complicated to me; I feel confused a lot of the time by life. I feel confused about the fact that we can be so tender as creatures to one another, and so monstrous at the same time.

Sometimes it gets talked about as if life is all about the individual, and I don't think it is. I'm really interested in what writing can contribute to a kind of cultural intelligence.

The countries that are the least responsible for causing climate change are paying the heaviest price.

What keeps me level is the refusal to let the best of human aspirations die in the face of the challenges. I make a moral decision to be hopeful.

As writers, the world is not about individual expression entirely because we are producing works of literature and getting them out into the world.