Honesty is stronger medicine than sympathy, which may console but often conceals.

I designed furniture that pulled apart, folded, and broke down into neat stacks. Since arriving in California, I had moved four times and it looked as if I would move again. Was it the land running under my feet or my feet running over the land?

Walking is also an ambulation of mind.

Islands are reminders of arrivals and departures.

A tree is an aerial garden, a botanical migration from the sea, from those earliest plants, the seaweeds; it is a purchase on crumbled rock, on ground. The human, standing, is only a different upsweep and articulation of cells. How treelike we are, how human the tree.

I like big, open, spare landscapes. There's lots of room. Nobody bothers you... I feel as if I can think there.

It's no wonder human beings are so narcissistic. The way our ears are constructed, we can hear only what is right next to us or else the internal monologue inside.