These phrases and paragraphs are noted down directly from my conversations with a woman in the Basque country of Southern France. She has a marvelous garden, and as she gardened, she talked with me, in her contemplative way. I didn’t need to say much of anything. It was as if she were carrying on a conversation with my thoughts.

STATEMENTS SHE PLANTED, THAT GREW UP TO BE STORIES

As independence is to a cat, so are words to a good sentence.

The tree has learned, and with its knowledge has gained the capacity to give sweet fruit. Humans have learned; but often when they gain what their epoch calls knowledge, it does not bring any capacity to give love. As a result, knowledge and love are thought to be separate; hence our catastrophes.

So many catastrophes that the trees may stop giving fruit.

The heart is a thundercloud: sometimes lightning, sometimes showers, sometimes a clearing before the winds that blow from a world within this world.

Once it can have its clearing, it can, from then on, call forth any weather necessary.

Paradise is in the dirt anywhere, available once you wink and work in a certain way. Then it comes alive, and it is more than a place, more than reality; rather, the soil of reality, source of forms. This grounding of things, it is thoroughly and roughly alive, has senses of its own. Not earth, it is the way the earth watches us, so that we may be judged. Therefore it is natural to ask, what might be the expression on the face of paradise?

Quizzical. Amorous. Full of longing, rigor, hopefulness, independence. In that expression is the origin of all the come-hither looks given forever.

The military, which has played such a role in our history, is doomed. This is so because, in the long run, only metaphors grow out the barrel of a gun.