Audubon on other minds and the secret knowledge of animals, the paradox of joy with Nick Cave and Lisel Mueller, how Dostoyevsky became a writer

I’m going to settle for small, random stabs of extreme interestingness – moments of intense awareness of the things I’m about to lose, and of gladness that they exist

But, one could ask, what about sorrow? We all know that there is sorrow in life. It comes to each of us in the loss of someone we love, in the loss of our power

And it just hit me, she says. These people came from me. And, I was in and outside of myself at the same time. Maybe this is the heart of joy.