Like I'm dragging bundles of old clothes? I'm carrying artifacts that breathe fire. I'm talking about a language of smoke. These are three-dimensional creatures that can mate. I'd no more leave them go by the side of the trail than I would my child. I'll carry them until someone amputates my arms.

Writing is like hunting. There are brutally cold afternoons with nothing in sight, only the wind and your breaking heart. Then the moment when you bag something big. The entire process is beyond intoxicating.

To be one woman, truly, wholly, is to be all women. Tend one garden and you will birth worlds.

I write a lot by sound. One sound leads me to another. These sounds aren't random; they have their own logic.

Women are defined by their biography, and men are sacrosanct from their biography.

As a citizen of the post-historical variety, I am in continual mourning and prepared for worse.

The Peruvian flute music is . . . cool. In this music, they have not yet invented the industrial revolution that leads to excessive punctuality or the failed experiment they call the nuclear family. This is the music of elements, untarnished, unrehearsed.