Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.

my own relationships with the animals in my life are absurdly complex: Some I love, some I eat, and the scraps left over from the ones I eat, I feed to the ones I love.

I never think that anything I'm writing is bluntly political in any way. I'm not going for commentary.

Now I'm starting to think he wasn't supposed to be my whole life, he was just this doorway to me.

If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life.

This is how Americans think. You believe that if something terrible happens to someone, they must have deserved it.

It's the same struggle for each of us, and the same path out: the utterly simple, infinitely wise, ultimately defiant act of loving one thing and then another, loving our way back to life.