Something in me was always watching life from the outside, permanently obsessed with the notion of belonging vs. not-belonging [to a group]. It did not make for a happy childhood, but it was excellent training for a writer.

...trust in Creation which is made fresh daily and doesn’t suffer in translation. This God does not work in especially mysterious ways. The sun here rises and sets at six exactly. A caterpillar becomes a butterfly. A bird raises its brood in the forest and a greenheart tree will only grow from a greenheart seed. He brings drought sometimes followed by torrential rains and if these things aren’t always what I had in mind, they aren’t my punishment either. They’re rewards, let’s say for the patience of a seed.

there are people who read my work and accuse me of being political! As far as I'm concerned that's like accusing a dog of having a bark!

Oh, that river of wishes, the slippery crocodile dream of it, how it might have carried my body down through all the glittering sand bars to the sea.

If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread.

It feels strange to me to be living in a box, hiding from the steadying influence of the moon; wearing the hide of a cow, which is supposed to be dyed to match God-knows-what, on my feet; making promises over the telephone about things I will do at a precise hour next year.

the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners