The older I get, the more I appreciate my rural childhood. I spent a lot of time outdoors, unsupervised, which is a blessing.

Sleeping alone seemed unnatural to me, and pitiful, something done in hospitals or when you're contagious.

What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.

If you're standing in the manure pile, it's somebody's job to mention the stink.

It's the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.

April is the cruelest month, T.S. Eliot wrote, by which I think he meant (among other things) that springtime makes people crazy. We expect too much, the world burgeons with promises it can't keep, all passion is really a setup, and we're doomed to get our hearts broken yet again. I agree, and would further add: Who cares? Every spring I go out there anyway, around the bend, unconditionally. ... Come the end of the dark days, I am more than joyful. I'm nuts.

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!