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.

Places come to exist in our imaginations because of stories, and so do we. When we reach for a "sense of place," we posit an intimate relationship to a set of stories connected to a particular location, such as Hong Kong or the Grand Canyon or the bed where we were born, thinking of histories and the evolution of personalities in a local context. Having "a sense of self" means possessing a set of stories about who we are and with whom and why.

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.

What I wanted was some dreamlike Frank Lloyd Wright bungalow where we could sit on the veranda forever and it would always be twilight in the temperate zones, in the most beautiful house.

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

Don't worry about meaning. If a story's any good, it can't help but have meaning. Let the PhDs tell you what your story means.