One of the good elements of old age is that we no longer have to prove anything, to ourselves or to anyone else. We are what we are.

In the garden the door is always open into the "holy" - growth, birth, death. Every flower holds the whole mystery in its short cycle, and in the garden we are never far away from death, the fertilizing, good, creative death.

Lunches are just not good. They take the heart out of the day and the spaciousness from the morning's work.

Mountains define you. You cannot define / Them.

When we admit our vulnerability, we include others. If we deny it, we shut them out.

My own feeling is that the only possible reason for engaging in the hard labor of writing a novel, is that one is bothered by something one needs to understand, and can come to understand only through the characters in the imagined situation.

It is the place of renewal and of safety, where for a little while there will be no harm or attack and, while every sense is nourished, the soul rests.