For centuries poets, some poets, have tried to give a voice to the animals, and readers, some readers, have felt empathy and sorrow. If animals did have voices, and they could speak with the tongues of angels-at the very least with the tongues of angels-they would be unable to save themselves from us. What good would language do? Their mysterious otherness has not saved them, nor have their beautiful songs and coats and skins and shells and eyes.

Why does the writer write? The writer writes to serve--hopeless ly he writes in the hope that he might serve--not himself and not others, but that great cold elemental grace that knows us.

I think the writer has to be responsible to signs and dreams. If you don't do anything with it, you lose it.

One is always enthralled, I think, when a young writer you're just beginning to read and comprehend dies.

The story knows itself better than the writer does at some point, knows what's being said before the writer figures out how to say it.

Of course there is nothing that cannot be done incorrectly.

But who knows what good might come from the least of us? From the bones of old horses is made the most beautiful Prussian Blue.