It is a cliche these days to observe that the United States now possesses a global empire - different from Britain's and Rome's but an empire nonetheless.

Travel is like a good challenging book: It demands presentness-the ability to live completely in the moment.

What happened on September 11th is at least, theoretically, small stuff compared to what can happen.

If you look at the history of the U.S., we were an empire long before we were a nation.

The more dynamic the capitalistic expansion, the greater the disparity. It is from the disparity that we are going to get all the political upheaval for the next few years.

Prostitution, black marketeering, and informing on ones neighbors and friends all had such a deep-rooted tradition in Romania that there was a charming naturalness and innocence about it.

It is development, not poverty, that causes upheaval and terrorism.

Wherever you have weakening states and turmoil, you will have a fertile petri dish for terrorism.

It is time to understand the environment for what it is: the national security issue of the early twenty-first century.

What does the earth look like in the places where people commit atrocities? Is there a bad smell, a genius loci, something about the landscape that might incriminate?

The first thing to recognize not just about Afghanistan but about any poor undeveloped country is that as big as it looks on the map, it's much bigger when you're there.

The visions we offer our children shape the future. It _matters_ what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.

Your mind is like a tunnel that has no end, and a baloon, that even too much air cannot burst.

What the best novels and novelists do is to offer a different way of seeing.

There are multiple things entering in your mind.

The Pacific Northwest, and particularly Whidbey Island, is extremely suited to be a location in a novel.

I do not sleep, but it's totally fine, because I love what I do.

Over the years, you grow up, you mature and you see things in a different way, and it's reflected in the writing.

We and God have business with each other, and in opening ourselves to God's influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled.

Women speak two languages - one of which is verbal.