All relationships change the brain - but most important are the intimate bonds that foster or fail us, altering the delicate circuits that shape memories, emotions and that ultimate souvenir, the self.

Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.

We have vexed and bothered every plant and every animal on every continent.

And yet, words are the passkeys to our souls. Without them, we can't really share the enormity of our lives.

For the longest time I didn't realize I was creative - I just thought I was strange.

So before I start work on a book, I'm like a pregnant mole - I obsessively tidy and order my closets and everything in my study. Because there's such a cascade of images and ideas that I'm grapping with mentally, I couldn't also be in a chaotic setting.

Complexity excites the mind, and order rewards it. In the garden, one finds both, including vanishingly small orders too complex to spot, and orders so vast the mind struggles to embrace them.