The ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language.

The apparent ease of California life is an illusion, and those who believe the illusion will live here in only the most temporary way.

In theory momentos serve to bring back the moment. In fact they serve only to make clear how inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here. How inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here is something else I could never afford to see.

The past could be jettisoned . . . but seeds got carried.

I ... have another cup of coffee with my mother. We get along very well, veterans of a guerrilla war we never understood.

Before I started working on a computer, writing a piece would be like making something up every day, taking the material and never quite knowing where you were going to go next with the material. With a computer it was less like painting and more like sculpture, where you start with a block of something and then start shaping it.

I've always been fascinated with marine geography and how deep things are. I was spellbound by the tsunami, for example, by the actual maps. There is just something about the unseen bottom of the sea that has always fascinated me, how deep is it.