I am far less interested in serving as a change agent than in functioning as a prose artist, whether it's fiction or nonfiction.

I like to call it 'the national automobile slum.' You can call it suburban sprawl. I think it's appropriate to call it the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.

The twentieth century was about getting around. The twenty-first century will be about staying in a place worth staying in.

A land full of places that are not worth caring about may soon be a nation and a way of life that is not worth defending.

It pays to remember that societies get what they deserve, not what they expect.

The living arrangements American now think of as normal are bankrupting us economically, socially, ecologically and spiritually.

The immersive ugliness of our everyday environments in America is entropy made visible.

Americans threw away their communities in order to save a few dollars on hair dryers and plastic food storage tubs, never stopping to reflect on what they were destroying.

Suburbia is the insidious cartoon of the country house in a cartoon of the country.

Americans are suffering so much from being in unrewarding environments that it has made us very cynical. I think that American suburbia has become a powerful generator of anxiety and depression.

The salient fact about the decades ahead is that we are entering a permanent global energy crisis and it will change everything about how we live.

You can survive without artistry, but you cannot live without artistry.

I'm beginning to perceive motherhood as a long, slow letting go, of which birth is just the first step.

My first advantage: I have everything. My second advantage: this is just another island. My third advantage: I am bigger than it all.

Endings and beginnings look just the same.

perturbed to put trust on people nowadays, people changes partner as per necessity. :(

I was walking along looking for somebody, and then suddenly I wasn't anymore.

If what you are doing is important, you will encounter resistance. If what you are doing isn't important it will be easy.

Animals are wonderful, because they put you in a great emotional state.

All truth is God's truth.

Symbols are powerful because they are the visible signs of invisible realities.