What have we been doing all these centuries but trying to call God back to the mountain, or, failing that, raise a peep out of anything that isn't us? What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are not they both saying: Hello? We spy on whales and on interstellar radio objects; we starve ourselves and pray till we're blue.

There are no events but thoughts and the heart's hard turning, the heart's slow learning where to love and whom. The rest is merely gossip, and tales for other times.

How you spend your days is how you spend your life.

Writing a book is like rearing children -- willpower has very little to do with it. If you have a little baby crying in the middle of the night, and if you depend only on willpower to get you out of bed to feed the baby, that baby will starve. You do it out of love.

The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out.

The way we live our days, is the way we live our lives.

Almost all of my many passionate interests, and my many changes of mind, came through books. Books prompted the many vows I made to myself.