Canada is a balloon-puncturing country. You are not really allowed to be an icon unless you also make an idiot of yourself.

I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one 'race' - the human race - and that we are all members of it.

The reader cannot see into your heart. He will know only what you tell him. Make the blind see your words. Make the hard-hearted feel. Make the deaf hear.

I was sand, I was snow—written on, rewritten, smoothed over.

I read a piece by a guy out in Alberta that said Canadians are lazy because they're not patenting enough new inventions. I disagree. Canadians invent a lot of stuff. Actually patenting them is expensive.

I look up at the ceiling, tracing the foliage of the wreath. Today it makes me think of a hat, the large-brimmed hats women used to wear at some period during the old days: hats like enormous halos, festooned with fruit and flowers, and the feathers of exotic birds; hats like an idea of paradise, floating just above the head, a thought solidified.

The future of narrative? Built in, part of the human template. Not going away. The future of the codex book, with pages and so forth? A platform for transmitting narratives.