Words Are My Matter: Writings on Life and Books

When I can use prose as I do in writing stories as a direct means or form of thinking, not as a way of saying something I know or believe, not as a vehicle for a message, but as an exploration, a voyage of discovery resulting in something I didn’t know before I wrote it, then I feel that I am using it properly.

In postindustrial civilisation, where animals are held to be irrelevant to adult concerns except insofar as they are useful or edible, animal story is mostly perceived as being for children.

To be friends with the animals is to be a friend and a child of the world, connected to it, nourished by it, belonging to it.

I have more trust in my Inner Teacher. She is subtle and humble because she hopes to be understood. She contains contradictory opinions without getting indigestion. She can mediate between the arrogant artist self who mutters, “I don’t give a damn if you don’t understand me,” and the preacher self who shouts, “Now hear this!” She doesn’t declare tr

Art reveals something beyond the message. A story or poem may reveal truths to me as I write it. I don’t put them there. I find them in the story as I work.

Words are the wings both intellect and imagination fly on. Music, dance, visual arts, crafts of all kinds, all are central to human development and well-being, and no art or skill is ever useless learning; but to train the mind to take off from immediate reality and return to it with new understanding and new strength, nothing quite equals poem and

All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how. Without them, our lives get made up for us by other people.

I see art as a community enterprise both in place and time, and believe that art that leads to more art is more valuable than sterile excellence.

Science fiction lends itself readily to imaginative subversion of any status quo.

Books are social vectors,