I heard a bird congratulating itself all day for being a jay. Nobody cared. But it was glad all over again, and said so, again.

I don't see writing as a communication of something already discovered, as "truths" already known. Rather, I see writing as a job of experiment. It's like any discovery job; you don't know what's going to happen until you try it.

Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.

The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.

The things you do not have to say make you rich. Saying things you do not have to say weakens your talk. Hearing things you do not need to hear dulls your hearing. And things you know before you hear them — those are you, those are why you are in the world.

What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.

I embrace emerging experience, I participate in discovery. I am a butterfly. I am not a butterfly collector. I want the experience of the butterfly.