Stories are compasses and architecture, we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice.

You get lost out of a desire to be lost. But in the place called lost strange things are found.

Books are solitudes in which we meet.

What gets called 'the sixties' left a mixed legacy and a lot of divides. But it opened everything to question, and what seems the most fundamental and most pervasive in all the ensuing changes is the loss of faith in authority: the authority of government, of science, of patriarchy, of progress, of capitalism, of violence, of whiteness.

EXPLORING the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind, and walking travels both terrains.

A lot of people think of political activism as some grim duty, and I think we do have an obligation to be citizens - to be informed and engaged.

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