The twentieth century was about getting around. The twenty-first century will be about staying in a place worth staying in.

Detroit right now is virtually abandoned at its core to the degree that a lot of what had been slums thirty years ago are now wildflower meadows. The rebuilding of Detroit will occur a much smaller scale. It remains to be seen what will become of Detroit's vast suburbs.

The industrial age is over. What follows will be life lived on a much smaller and finer scale.

I am far less interested in serving as a change agent than in functioning as a prose artist, whether it's fiction or nonfiction.

When a society is stressed, when it comes up against things that are hard to understand, you get a lot of delusional thinking.

At the heart of our misunderstanding and infantile behavior is the wish for a miracle cure.

The task we face is reorganizing the systems we depend on for daily life in a way that is consistent with the realities coming down at us.