I tried to visualize my jealousy as a yellowy-brown cloud boiling around inside me, then going out through my nose like smoke and turning into a stone and falling down into the ground. That did work a little. But in my visualization a plant covered with poison berries would grow out of the stone, whether I wanted it to or not.

All Creatures know that some must die That all the rest may take and eat; Sooner or later, all transform Their blood to wine, their flesh to meat. But Man alone seeks Vengefulness, And writes his abstract Laws on stone; For this false Justice he has made, He tortures limb and crushes bone. Is this the image of a god? My tooth for yours, your eye for mine? Oh, if Revenge did move the stars Instead of Love, they would not shine.

poetry is where the language is renewed.

What you get is no longer what you see.

Plague has hung over human history. The biggest human extinction was after 1492 in North and South America when the mortality rate was 95 per cent, which is enormous. But again, I'm actually giving you grounds for optimism: There were enough to continue. The five per cent who made it through are what you need to survive a bottleneck, which we have been through before.

[My favorite word is] and. It is so hopeful.

I'm not senile," I snapped. "If I burn the house down it will be on purpose.