Each time I write, each time the authentic words break through, I am changed. The older order that I was collapses and dies. I lose control. I do not know exactly what words will appear on the page. I follow language. I follow the sound of the words, and I am surprised and transformed by what I record.

Waging war is not a primary physical need.

Philosophy means nothing unless it is connected to birth, death, and the continuance of life. Anytime you are going to build a society that works, you have to begin from nature and the body.

Even in the grimmest of circumstances, a shift in perspective can create startling change.

The hard surface of the stone is impervious to nothing in the end. The heat of the sun leaves evidence of daylight. Each drop of rain changes the form; even the wind and the air itself, invisible to our eyes, etches its presence. … All history is taken in by stones.

What always seems miraculous is when aesthetic necessities yield an insight which otherwise I would have missed.

Telling a story of illness, one pulls a thread through a narrow opening flanked on one side by shame and the other by trivia.