Parenting is something that happens mostly while you're thinking of something else.

It seems very safe to me to be surrounded by green growing things and water.

It's frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known.

Growing food was the first activity that gave us enough prosperity to stay in one place, form complex social groups, tell our stories, and build our cities.

I used to think religion was just more of the same thing. Dump responsibility on the big guy. Now I see an importance in that. It's a relief to accept that not everything is under your control.

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

There's a graveyard in northern France where all the dead boys from D-Day are buried. The white crosses reach from one horizon to the other. I remember looking it over and thinking it was a forest of graves. But the rows were like this, dizzying, diagonal, perfectly straight, so after all it wasn't a forest but an orchard of graves. Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature.