Fundamentalists of all faiths are the fundamental evil of our time.

We were language's magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny.

Language upon a silvered tongue affords enchantment enough.

As though she had entered a fable, as though she were no more than words crawling along a dry page, or as though she were becoming that page itself, that surface on which her story would be written and across which there blew a hot and merciless wind, turning her body to papyrus, her skin to parchment, her soul to paper.

Once you have been in an earthquake you know, even if you survive without a scratch, that like a stroke in the heart, it remains in the earth's breast, horribly potential, always promising to return, to hit you again, with an even more devastating force.

Can one drown in one's element... If fish can drown in water, can human beings suffocate in air?

We are the only animals that tell stories to understand the world we live in.