Singing with others is an unmediated, shared experience as each person feels the same music reverberating in their individual bodies. Singing is part of our humanity; it is embodied empathy.

I don't write quickly, and I don't want to.

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

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.

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.

In many traditions, the world was sung into being: Aboriginal Australians believe their ancestors did so. In Hindu and Buddhist thought, Om was the seed syllable that created the world.

Time is found in the calibration of the individual to the timing of a collective endeavour, the social grace that less clock-bound societies must practise.