Previous technologies have expanded communication. But the last round may be contracting it. The eloquence of letters has turned into the unnuanced spareness of texts; the intimacy of phone conversations has turned into the missed signals of mobile phone chat ... ('you're breaking up' is the cry of our time).

....there are three prerequisites to going out into the world to walk for pleasure. One must have free time, a place to go, and a body unhindered by illness or social restraints.

I roam around a lot in my territory, but what I learn at one end inflects and opens up my understanding at the other.

I sometimes wonder what those of us who are writers would become in a nonliterary culture - storytellers? Hermits?

Given a choice between their worldview and the facts, it's always interesting how many people toss the facts.

The present rearranges the past. We never tell the story whole because a life isn't a story; it's a whole Milky Way of events and we are forever picking out constellations from it to fit who and where we are.

There are disasters that are entirely manmade, but none that are entirely natural.