How come we've got these bodies? They are frail supports for what we feel. There are times I get so hemmed in by my arms and legs I look forward to getting past them. As though death will set me free like a traveling cloud... I'll be out there as a piece of the endless body of the world feeling pleasures so much larger than skin and bones and blood.

There will never come a time when I will be able to resist my emotions.

Here I am, where I ought to be. A writer must have a place where he or she feels this, the place to love and be irritated with.

Your life feels different on you, once you greet death and understand your heart's position. You wear your life like a garment from the mission bundle sale ever after - lightly because you realize you never paid nothing for it, cherishing because you know you won't ever come by such a bargain again.

You never know where you're going to find the same thoughts in another brain, but when it happens you know it right off, just like you were connected by a small electrical wire that suddenly glows red hot and sparks.

I am at the bookstore a lot, but let my friends, the professional Birchbark Books staff, handle the day in and day out.

It is easy to take away the world that we think is so permanent and reliable.