“Ideas aren't magical; the only tricky part is holding on to one long enough to get it written down. ”

“A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story.”

“For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel.”

“The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.”

“The world is big but it is comprehensible," says R. Buckminster Fuller. But it seems to me that the world is not nearly big enough and that any portion of its surface, left unpaved and alive, is infinitely rich in details and relationships, in wonder, beauty, mystery comprehensible only in part. The very existence of existence is itself suggestive of the unknown - not a problem, but a mystery. We will never get to the bottom of it, never know the whole of even so small and trivial and useless and precious a place as Aravaipa. Therein lies our redemption.”

“Our institutions are too big; they represent not the best but the worst characteristics of human beings. By submitting to huge hierarchies of power, we gain freedom from personal responsibility for what we do and are forced to do - the seduction of it - but we lose the dignity of being real men and women. Power corrupts; attracts the worst and corrupts the best. ... Refuse to participate in evil; insist on taking part in what is healthy, generous, and responsible. Stand up, speak out, and when necessary fight back. Get down off the fence and lend a hand, grab a-hold, be a citizen - not a subject.”

“I guess life is like a novel. Some of it is written by fate, some of it is written by God... but the part we are ultimately judged by is the part we write ourselves.”