Quotes from Jean Hegland

We're not Christians, we're capitalists," he said. "Everybody in this whangdanged country is a capitalist, whether he likes it or not. Everyone in this country is one of the world's most voracious consumers, using resources at a rate twenty times greater than that of anyone else on this poor earth. And Christmas is our golden opportunity to pick up the pace.

But whether I touch him or I run, whether I'm dreaming or I'm awake, on his birthday or on all other days, my whole life has been contaminated with the fact that he is dead.

We knew a flood was inconvenient and destructive. At the same time we couldn't help but feel a peculiar sort of delight that something beyond us was large enough to destroy the inexorability of our routines.

She doesn't scream, but she groans and the sounds she makes are beyond the pain and work of labor, beyond human—or even animal—life. They are the sounds that move the earth, the sounds that give voice to the deep, violent fissures in the bark of the redwoods. They are the sounds of splitting cells, of bonding atoms, the sounds of the waxing moon and the forming stars.

This body is yours. No one can ever take it from you, if only you will accept yourself, claim it again--your arms, your spine, your ribs, the small of your back. It's all yours. All this bounty, all this beauty, all this strength and grace is yours. This garden is yours. Take it back. Take it back.

I never knew how much we consumed. It seems as if we are all appetite, as if a human being is simply a bundle of needs to drain the world. It's no wonder there are wars, no wonder the earth and water and air are polluted. It's no wonder the economy collapsed, if Eva and I use so much merely to stay alive.

The best way to keep from being a victim is to write your own terms." It

But whether I touch him or I run, whether I'm dreaming or I'm awake, on his birthday or on all other days, my whole life has been contaminated with the fact that he is dead.

All that attacks is memory, all I suffer is regret.

Beyond us I could see the mountains rising blue and hazy, and I knew I had only to cross them and keep on walking to catch up with all my dreams.

Still, there's a lucidity that sometimes comes in that moment when you find yourself looking at the world through your tears, as if those tears served as a lens to clarify what it is you're looking at.

So my sister dances and the dead house burns, and I scrawl these few last words by the light of its burning. I know I should toss this story, too, on those flames. But I am still too much a storyteller -or at least a storykeeper-still too much my father's daughter to burn these pages.

Each … breeze," he says, watching the ripple of the bright, unfurling leaves, "will be me, missing. You." Smiling

It's a physical urge, stronger than thirst or sex. Halfway back on the left side of my head there is a spot that longs for the jolt of a bullet, that yearns for that fire, that final empty rip. I want to be let out of this cavern, to open myself up to the ease of not-living. I am tired of sorrow and struggle and worry. I am tired of my sad sister. I want to turn out the last light.

Humanism, he continued, leaning toward his colleagues with the zeal of his conviction even as he stumbled over his words, that holds as its core value the belief that human beings can learn and grow and change, and that art—and literature—can fuel that evolution. But

In sooth, I know not why I am so sad.

In some ways we were more remote than strangers because strangers at least have the possibility of yet unmade connections.

I was aghast by the betrayal those thoughts represented, by the callous creature they proved me to be.

I never knew how much we consumed. It seems as if we are all appetite, as if a human being is simply a bundle of needs to drain the world. It's no wonder there are wars, no wonder the earth and water and air are polluted. It's no wonder the economy collapsed, if Eva and I use so much merely to stay alive.

Instinct is older than paper, wilder than words.

Maybe it's true that the people who live through the times that become history's pivotal points are those least likely to understand them. I wonder if Abraham Lincoln himself could have answered the inevitable test questions about the causes of the Civil War.

I get so scared, I can't stop it. It's like black waves, and I'm a little cork. I bob to the surface and think I'll do okay, and then another wave comes and I'm drowning again." I

Guy walks into the doctor's office," the clownish fool retorts, "says, 'Doc, I've hurt my arm in several places.' 'So,' his doctor says, 'stay outta those places.'" "How

tragedy is suffering elevated into art, it's art that helps humans endure—and sometimes even transcend—their suffering. It's