Gunter Grass

Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. Pointless and yet necessary, that's hard for a puritan to understand.

I'm always astonished by a forest. It makes me realise that the fantasy of nature is much larger than my own fantasy. I still have things to learn.

Writers know that sometimes things are there in the drawer for decades before they finally come out and you are capable of writing about them.

Another thing that freaks me out is time. Time is like a book. You have a beginning, a middle and an end. It's just a cycle.

In centering prayer, the sacred word is not the object of the attention but rather the expression of the intention of the will.

I'm a big action junkie. I grew up on the '80s action movies - the bad ones and the good ones.