You know the mind is an astonishing, long-living, erotic thing.

I have a basic indolence about me which is essential to writing. ... It's thinking time, it's hanging-out time, it's daydreaming time. You know, it's lie-around-the-bed time, it's sitting-like-a-dope-in-your-chair time. And that seems to me essential to any work.

Rosiness is not a worse windowpane than gloomy gray when viewing the world.

It wasn't until I lived in the countryside that I began to understand the life of the countryside and the people in it and trees and water. Just learning about water is an education for a city person.

Today's wars are about oil. But alternate energies exist now - solar, wind - for every important energy-using activity in our lives. The only human work that cannot be done without oil is war.

For me, the meaning of life is the next generation.

No metaphor reinvents the job of the nurture of children except to muddy or mock.