Who you are isn't tied solely to what you say, even though it may feel that way to you now.

Symbolic of life, hair bolts from our head[s]. Like the earth, it can be harvested, but it will rise again. We can change its color and texture when the mood strikes us, but in time it will return to its original form, just as Nature will in time turn our precisely laid-out cities into a weed-way.

Part of the irony of environmentalism is questing for solutions when you know you're part of the problem.

Nature is more like a seesaw than a crystal, a never-ending conga line of bold moves and corrections.

Life becomes a lot simpler for a creative person when he or she finds the routine that works best. ... get in the habit of going through the routine every day, and on some of those days, you're going to be lucky and have done some good work. ... Go to your study, close the door, invent your confidence.

If a mind is just a few pounds of blood, urea, and electricity, how does it manage to contemplate itself, worry about its soul, do time-and-motion studies, admire the shy hooves of a goat, know that it will die, enjoy all the grand and lesser mayhems of the heart ?

There is a furnace in our cells, and when we breathe we pass the world through our bodies, brew it lightly, and turn it loose again, gently altered for having known us.