The woods are a place where children can go to think. Children gravitate towards these spaces. When I was a child it was nothing more than a scrubby little overhang under a rhododendron bush, but it was incredibly important to me.

Children say they are unhappy in every language they have. They say it in silence, and they say it in riots.

As a writer you have a duty to be a messenger.

Being adequately informed is a democratic duty, just as the vote is a democratic right. A misinformed electorate, voting without knowledge, is not a true democracy.

Just because Galileo was a heretic doesn't make every heretic a Galileo.

Cultures have long heard wisdom in non-human voices: Apollo, god of music, medicine and knowledge, came to Delphi in the form of a dolphin. But dolphins, which fill the oceans with blipping and chirping, and whales, which mew and caw in ultramarine jazz - a true rhapsody in blue - are hunted to the edge of silence.

The clock, for all its precision in measurement, is a blunt instrument for the psyche and for society. Schedules can replace sensitivity to the mood of a moment, clock time can ride roughshod over the emotions of individuals.