But still, the other voice, the intuitive, returns, like grass forcing its way through concrete.

A story is told as much by silence as by speech.

Far more frightening than the thought of dying was the experience of erasure already occurring in my life. My fear of becoming someone who did not count.

What is buried in the past of one generation falls to the next to claim.

In the system of chivalry, men protect women against men. This is not unlike the protection relationship which [organized crime] established with small businesses in the early part of this century. Indeed, chivalry is an age-old protection racket which depends for its existence on rape.

It is a grief over the fate of the Earth that contains within it a joyful hope, that we might reclaim this Earth.

I love that moment in writing when language falls short. There is something more there. A larger body. Even by the failure of words I begin to detect its dimensions. As I work the prose, shift the verbs, look for new adjectives, a different rhythm, syntax, something new begins to come to the surface.