We approach the divine by enlarging our souls and lighting up our brains.

I mean that gods do not limit men. Men limit men.

If you want to make a name for yourself, the oldest trick in the book is to attack what everybody else reveres.

From the outside, my life may look chaotic, but inside I feel like some kind of monk licking an ice cream cone while straddling a runaway horse.

You've heard of people calling in sick. You may have called in sick a few times yourself. But have you ever thought about calling in well? It'd go like this: You'd get the boss on the line and say, "Listen, I've been sick ever since I started working here, but today I'm well and I won't be in anymore." Call in well.

On the mainland, a rain was falling. The famous Seattle rain. The thin, gray rain that toadstools love. The persistent rain that knows every hidden entrance into collar and shopping bag. The quiet rain that can rust a tin roof without the tin roof making a sound in protest. The shamanic rain that feeds the imagination. The rain that seems actually a secret language, whispering, like the ecstasy of primitives, of the essence of things.

And what would our ideas of God, of religion, be like if they had come to us through the minds of women? Ever think of that?