We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumors of death, beauty, violence.

I wake up thinking: What am I reading? What will I read next? I'm terrified that I'll run out, that I will read through all I want to, and be forced to learn wildflowers at last, to keep awake.

The point of going somewhere like the Napo River in Ecuador is not to see the most spectacular anything. It is simply to see what is there.

The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring.

These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present.

At night I read and write, and things I have never understood become clear; I reap the harvest of the rest of the year's planting

Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation's short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.