We live in stories. What we are is stories. We do things because of what is called character, and our character is formed by the stories we learn to live in.

They knew bullshit, and they knew about the ruling class; dying for a ruling class cause was almost always bullshit.

A man ... needs to get out in the open air and sweat and blow off the stink.

Writing is a funny business. You sit in your room and listen to voices and write everything down. What kind of a profession is that?

In learning to pay respectful attention to one another and plants and animals, we relearn the acts of empathy, and thus humility and compassion - ways of proceeding that grow more and more necessary as the world crowds in.

We live in stories. What we are is stories. We do things because of what is called character, and our character is formed by the stories we learn to live in.

I wonder what my father saw in his most secret sight of the right life. It's my guess he wanted to live out his life surrounded by friends and children and fertile fields of his own designing. I tihnk he wanted to die believing he had been in one the creation of a good sweet place. Those old pilgrims believed stories in which the West was a promise, a far away place where decent people could escape the wreckage of the old world and start over. Come to me, the dream whispers, and you can have one more chance.