I always start out with an idea, even a boring idea, that becomes a question I don't have answers to.

[Obama is ] creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom . . . [He is] the man for this time.

Life that crawled, life that slunk and crept and never closed its eyes. Life that burrowed and scurried, and life so still it was indistinguishable from the ivy stems on which it lay. Birth, life, and death - each took place on the hidden side of a leaf.

...she needed to confirm its presence. Like the keeper of the lighthouse and the prisoner, she regarded it as a mooring, a checkpoint, some stable visual object that assured her that the world was still there; that this was like and not a dream. That she was alive somewhere, inside, which she acknowledged to be true only because a thing she knew intimately was out there, outside of herself.

Passion is never enough; neither is skill.

Home is memory, home is your history, home is where you work. Some people want to abandon it and become truly local. But the questions are all there.

The language must be careful and must appear effortless. It must not sweat. It must suggest and be provocative at the same time.