I consider fiction a very high-class form of lying. I enjoy and admire it enormously, but I don't think I'm very good at it.

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

Smell brings to mind... a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years.

Humans are the most successful invasives of all time.

No matter how politely one says it, we owe our existence to the farts of blue-green algae.

Tranquillity hides in small spaces, and when found needs to be treasured, because you know it's a phantom that will slip away again.

A life like an intricately woven basket, frayed, worn, broken, unraveled, reworked, reknit from many of its original pieces... Life can survive in the constant shadow of illness, and even rise to moments of rampant joy, but the shadow remains, and one has to make space for it.