“[I]f you know wilderness in the way that you know love, you would be unwilling to let it go. We are talking about the body of the beloved, not real estate.”

“It just may be that the most radical act we can commit is to stay home. What does that mean to finally commit to a place, to a people, to a community?It doesn't mean it's easy, but it does mean you can live with patience, because you're not going to go away. It also means commitment to bear witness, and engaging in 'casserole diplomacy' by sharing food among neighbors, by playing with the children and mending feuds and caring for the sick. These kinds of commitment are real. They are tangible. They are not esoteric or idealistic, but rooted in the bedrock existence of where we choose to maintain our lives.That way we begin to know the predictability of a place. We anticipate a species long before we see them. We can chart the changes, because we have a memory of cycles and seasons; we gain a capacity for both pleasure and pain, and we find the strength within ourselves and each other to hold these lines.That's my definition of family. And that's my definition of love.”

“How do we remain faithful to our own spiritual imagination and not betray what we know in our own bodies? The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy.”

“My grandmother simply shook her head and said, "You know what you saw. The bird doesn't need to be counted, and neither do you.”

“Once you know that you have a voice,” Louis said, “it’s no longer the voice that matters, but what is behind the voice.”

“I wonder what would happen if you gave up your need to be right?”

“Your voice is the wildest thing you own,” Brooke says to me. “And you’re giving it away. You can’t see it. Your obsession is blinding you.” He is angry. He is talking in shorthand. “You’re losing yourself.”