“I'm an Earth ecstatic, and my creed is simple: All life is sacred, life loves life, and we are capable of improving our behavior toward one another. As basic as that is, for me it's also tonic and ...”

“Who would deduce the dragonfly from the larva, the iris from the bud, the lawyer from the infant? ...We are all shape-shifters and magical reinventors. Life is really a plural noun, a caravan of se...”

“Symbolic of life, hair bolts from our head[s]. Like the earth, it can be harvested, but it will rise again. We can change its color and texture when the mood strikes us, but in time it will return ...”

“One morning as I closed the cyclone-fence gate / to begin a slow drift / down to the cookhouse on foot / (because my truck wheels were glued / in deep mud once again), / I walked straight into / th...”

“Devising a vocabulary for gardening is like devising a vocabulary for sex. There are the correct Latin names, but most people invent euphemisms. Those who refer to plants by Latin name are consider...”

“Alligators have beautiful undulating skin, which feels dense, spongy, solid, like the best eraser.”

“Vampires, contrary to popular belief, don't incinerate when exposed to sunlight. If that were true, there would be a heck of a lot more stories about spontaneous combustion around the world. They a...”

“I was a vegetarian until I started leaning toward the sunlight.”

“What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.”

“The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him.”

“Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.”

“I like John McCain, or he seems like a cool guy in a lot of ways. I don't agree with a lot of his policies, but he still seems like a cool guy.”

“Happiness seems made to be shared.”

“History seems to be so clumsy.”