When I'm writing it's as if I'm the observer. It's as if that computer screen there -it used to be the typewriter - just kind of dissolves and there's this whirling tunnel of mist and there's a kind of proscenium arch, and then there are my characters, and they say what they say, and I laugh sometimes in surprise at what they say.

You are life, inventing form. No more can you die on sword or years than you can die on doorways through which you walk, one room into another. Every room gives its word for you to speak, every passage its song for you to sing.

Grief is no more necessary when we understand death than fear is necessary when we understand flying.

Build an inner place to protect your truth.

Of course I'm a fake. We're all fakes on this whole world, pretending to be something we're not. We are not just bodies walking around, not just atoms, molecules. We are unkillable, undestroyable ideas of the IS, no matter how much we believe otherwise.

I don't think any of my books tell the reader anything new. But they do remind, in a time that is strident and screeching about the limitations of this world and all the trouble we can get ourselves into.

The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change.