The point of the dragonfly's terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows,is not that it all fits together like clockwork--for it doesn'tbut that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, finged tangle. Freedom is the world's water and weather, the world's nourishment freely given, its soil and sap: and the creator loves pizzazz.

The universe that suckled us is a monster that does not care if we live or die--it does not care if it itself grinds to a halt. It is a beast running on chance and death, careening from nowhere to nowhere. It is fixed and blind, a robot programmed to kill. We are free and seeing; we can only try to outwit it at every turn to save our lives.

Books swept me away, this way and that, one after the other; I made endless vows according to their lights for I believed them.

I write in my own journal when something extraordinary or funny happens. And there's some nice imagery in there. I don't think of what to do with it.

For all the insularity of the old guard, Pittsburgh was always an open and democratic town.

Whenever there is stillness there is the still small voice, God's speaking from the whirlwind, nature's old song, and dance.

I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as a dying friend. I hold its hand and hope it will get better.