Revolution Is As Unpredictable As An Earthquake

Stories Are Compasses And Architecture, We Navigate By Them, We Build Our Sanctuaries And Our Prisons Out Of Them, And To Be Without A Story Is To Be Lost In The Vastness Of A World That Spreads In All Directions Like Arctic Tundra Or Sea Ice.

They Are All Beasts Of Burden In A Sense, ' Thoreau Once Remarked Of Animals, 'made To Carry Some Portion Of Our Thoughts.' Animals Are The Old Language Of The Imagination; One Of The Ten Thousand Tragedies Of Their Disappearance Would Be A Silencing Of This Speech.

Walking Allows Us To Be In Our Bodies And In The World Without Being Made Busy By Them.

To Be Hopeful Means To Be Uncertain About The Future, To Be Tender Toward Possibilities, To Be Dedicated To Change All The Way Down To The Bottom Of Your Heart.

I Sometimes Wonder What Those Of Us Who Are Writers Would Become In A Nonliterary Culture - Storytellers? Hermits?