“Gmez had suggested I steal a fish to achieve more courage and purpose. I regarded this task as an anthropological experiment, though it crossed a border into something approaching magic, or perhaps...”

“In the new quiet I heard the sea as if my ears were laid against the ocean floor. I could hear everything. The rumbling earthquake of a ship and spider crabs moving between weeds.”

“I have always wanted to go to Trieste because it sounds like tristesse, which is a light-hearted word, even though in French it means sadness. In Spanish it is tristeza, which is heavier than Frenc...”

“I have researched aboriginal culture, Mayan hieroglyphics and the corporate culture of a Japanese car manufacturer, and I have written essays on the internal logic of various other societies, but I...”

“My problem is that I want to smoke the cigar and for someone else to light it. I want to blow out smoke. Like a volcano. Like a monster. I want to fume. I do not want to be the girl whose job it is...”

“Afterwards, I will have to tie the trees to bamboo poles so the wind will not determine their shape. A tree cannot be given form by the vagaries of the wind.”

“There is only one God and all atheists will learn that after their deaths”

“Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness...”

“Nobody that has seen a baby born can believe in god for a second. When you see your child born, and the panic, and the amount of technology that is saving the life of the two people you love most i...”