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

You always need that spark of imagination. Sometimes I'm midway through a book before it happens. However, I don't wait for the muse to descend, I sit down every day and I work when I'm not delivering lambs on the farm.

This story about good food begins in a quick-stop convenience market.

To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another that is surely the basic instinct - crying out: High tide! Time to move out into the glorious debris. Time to take this life for what it is!

you can't really know the person standing before you, because always there is some missing piece

In exchange for his first taste of powdered milk, Pascal showed me a tree we could climb to find a bird's nest. After we handled and examined the pink-skinned baby birds, he popped one of them into his mouth like a jujube. It seemed to please him a lot. He offered a baby bird to me, pantomiming that I should eat it. I understood perfectly well what he meant, but I refused. He did not seem disappointed to have to eat the whole brood himself.

Your dreams, what you hope for and all that, it's not separate from your life. It grows right up out of it.