We must surely appear to the world as exactly what we are: a nation that organizes its economy around consuming twice as much oil as it produces, and around the profligate wastefulness of the wars and campaigns required to defend such consumption. In recent years we have defined our national interest largely in terms of the oil fields and pipelines we need to procure fuel.

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

Back then I was still appalled that God would set down his barefoot boy and girl dollies into an Eden where, presumably, He had just turned loose elephantiasis and microes that eat the human cornea. Now I understand, God is not just rooting fo the dollies.

Global commerce is driven by a single conviction: the inalienable right to earn profit, regardless of any human cost.

My morning begins with trying not to get up before the sun rises. But when I do, it's because my head is too full of words, and I just need to get to my desk and start dumping them into a file. I always wake with sentences pouring into my head.

A flower is a plant's way of making love.

When moral superiority combines with billowing ignorance, they fill up a hot-air balloon that's awfully hard not to poke.