Artists and writers have to understand and live the truth that what we are doing is nourishing the world.

Before I published anything, I dreamed of publication, but I didn't actually write for it. I imagined that writing for an audience was something for fancier people. I aspired, but mostly I wrote for myself. I wrote because it made me happy.

They say change gets more difficult as we get older - each year we're more stuck in our ways, more reluctant to learn something new.

Settling other people's land is an American tradition.

Looking for the perfect day is not going to make us happy, because that day isn't going to come.

With each beat, the heart pumps nearly three ounces of blood into the arteries--seventy-five to ninety gallons an hour when the body is at rest.

I've been thinking about disowning some of my genes lately. I have a few healthy, happy, long-living optimists in my family tree - most of them fans of Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy, a major champion of positive thinking. But I've got plenty of ancestors who played out more tortured hands.