Somebody at one of these places [...] asked me: 'What do you do? How do you write, create?' You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it...

“You write like you talk.” And that made me very happy because there’s no better feedback than being told that you are you. And that your voice will outlive you. And that writing, which you continue to struggle with, has gone from something that could stop you in your tracks into something from which a stronger you...

My best response to the “horde of agents colonizing our brains” is: Be as weird as possible. One way to do this: take the Venn diagram of your lived experiences and what’s been talked about in the world. Now focus on the part of your life that doesn’t overlap. Out pops: pizza toast. As Kevin Kelly says: “Your life’s...

(to remind myself) By Wendell Berry August 5, 1934 – August 31, 2026 i Make a place to sit down. Sit down. Be quiet. You must depend upon affection, reading, knowledge, skill—more of each than you have—inspiration, work, growing older, patience, for patience joins time to eternity. Any readers who like your poems,...

That’s not the way your mind works: Overtime like sharp light defines. Devine.

Somewhere else, horses run towards horizons. in lockstep gallop honed like things I did or use to do or never did.

Once upon a time, on a train in Spain, a man peered across the carriage and saw none-other than Pablo Picasso himself. Mustering his courage, he approached the debauched artist, “Pablo, why does everything you paint look so strange? Blue? Cubes? What’s that all about? Why don’t you paint things realistic?” “What’s...

To have told my 30-year-old, 40-year-old, 50-year-old self that my artistic output wasn't the fundamental and most valuable aspect of my life, I would have thought you didn't understand. These days I don't feel that way. That's not to say that I've stopped working as much, but it just feels, self-evidently, that...

The branches of that tree are cut in such a way as to reveal a ladder all the way to the top. Where there should be a door locked tight. Sealed. against the sky. If you were inclined to see this portal so high up and then forced your way through, you would find only roots.

TV 2009