What I fear and desire most in this world is passion. I fear it because it promises to be spontaneous, out of my control, unnamed, beyond my reasonable self. I desire it because passion has color, like the landscape before me. It is not pale. It is not neutral. It reveals the backside of the heart.

We are contemporary citizens living in a technological world. Swimming in crosscultural waters can be dangerous, and if you are honest you can't stay there very long. Sooner or later you have to look at your own reflection and decide what to do with yourself. We are urban people. We make periodic pilgrimages to the country. . . . If we align ourselves with the spirit of place we will find humility fused with joy. The land holds stories.

As children, we had access to all the open space imaginable. We would set up camps in rural Utah where the Tempest Company was at work laying pipe. We spent time around the West in Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, and Colorado. Wild beautiful places. Now, many of these natural places have disappeared under the press of development.

The danger is in what we codify, commodify, and exploit.

I want to feel both the beauty and the pain of the age we are living in. I want to survive my life without becoming numb. I want to speak and comprehend words of wounding without having these words become the landscape where I dwell. I want to possess a light touch that can elevate darkness to the realm of stars.

When silence is a choice, it is an unnerving presence. When silence is imposed, it is censorship.

I don't set boundaries for myself when I am writing; if I did, I would be paralyzed from the start, unable to write a word on the page.