No place is perfect, but I admire Oahu for its offering of the tropical and the urban, and then its Asian-inflected culture and cuisines.

What if loving something means you should mostly feel frustrated and thwarted? And then a little ruined, too, by the pursuit? But you keep coming back for more?

The past, as you suggest, is absolutely present at all times and the present is born from the past. I wouldn't want to suggest that the past determines the present.

So my first book I had no experience having written a book, but each book is a little snapshot of who you are at that moment, accrued all through time, so I accept that.

It is 'where we are' that should make all the difference, whether we believe we belong there or not.

Don’t sanctuaries become prisons, and vice versa, foremost in the mind?

What hasty preparations we make for our future. Think of it: it seems almost tragic, the things we're sure we ought to bring along. We pack too heavy with what we hope we'll use, and too light of what we must. We thus go forth misladen, ill equipped for the dawn.