There's a marvelous sense of mastery that comes with writing a sentence that sounds exactly as you want it to. It's like trying to write a song, making tiny tweaks, reading it out loud, shifting things to make it sound a certain way... Sometimes it feels like digging out of a hole, but sometimes it feels like flying. When it's working and the rhythm's there, it does feel like magic to me.

I think of myself as something of a connoisseur of procrastination, creative and dogged in my approach to not getting things done.

Keeping animals, I have learned, is all about water. Who even knew chickens drank water? I didn't, but they do, and a lot.

I love tearing things out of the ground. I love digging and discarding. I love pruning. In fact, I love pruning so much that I once gave myself carpal-tunnel syndrome because I attacked a trumpet vine with so much dedication.

Sometimes I think I've figured out some order in the universe, but then I find myself in Florida

Winter in the country is very white. There is black grit on all the shoulders of the roads and on the big mounds from the plows, and all the cars are filthy, but the fields are dazzling and untouched and pristine.

Orchid hunting is a mortal occupation.