Harvard created wonderful conditions for me as a writerbut the writing was done, almost entirely, when I got home.

Harvard created wonderful conditions for me as a writerbut the writing was done, almost entirely, when I got home.

No bit of the natural world is more valuable or more vulnerable than the tree bit. Nothing is more like ourselves, standing upright, caught between heaven and earth, frail at the extremities, yet strong at the central trunk, and nothing is closer to us at the beginning and at the end, providing the timber boards that frame both the cradle and the coffin.

The appointment [in Harvard] gave me economic safety, writerly support, and intellectual self-respectplus eight months to myself every year.

Hope for a great sea-change timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.

So hope for a great sea-change on the far side of revenge. Believe that further shore is reachable from here. Believe in miracles and cures and healing wells.

There is not built-in meaning to anything, we are free to add any meaning we choose to give it.