There is an art to writing, and it is not always disclosure. The act itself can be beautiful, revelatory, and private.

When Pico [Iyer] talks about home being a place of isolation, I think he's right. But it's the paradox. I think that's why I so love Great Salt Lake. Every day when I look out at that lake, I think, "Ah, paradox" - a body of water than no one can drink. It's the liquid lie of the desert. But I think we have those paradoxes within us and certainly the whole idea of home is windswept with paradox.

Community is extremely intimate. When we talk about humor, I love that you know when you're home because there is laughter in the room, there is humor, there is shorthand. That is about community.

To hold silence and to be silenced are two very different experiences. And so another theme emerges, that of light and shadow. When we share our voice, who benefits? When we withhold, who benefits? And what are the consequences and costs of both?

I think we are living a life without specificity, and then our lives become abstractions.

When Emily Dickinson writes, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul,” she reminds us, as the birds do, of the liberation and pragmatism of belief.

I can only tell where I feel most at home, which is in the erosional landscape of the red rock desert of southern Utah, where the Colorado River cuts through sandstone and the geologic history of the Earth is exposed: our home in Castle Valley.