"For if I do something, I never do it thoughtlessly."

"Germany's crime is the greatest crime the world has ever known, because it is not on the scale of History: it is on the scale of Evolution."

"But who can say why two people become a couple, that small principality of mutual protection and regard? Couples are jigsaw puzzles that hang together by touching in just enough points."

"No matter how politely one says it, we owe our existence to the farts of blue-green algae."

"Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees on just what it is."

"Below us somewhere in the gelatinous phantasmagoria of churning blue, the whales wouldn't be much aware of the storm."

"Alligators have beautiful undulating skin, which feels dense, spongy, solid, like the best eraser."

"Couples are jigsaw puzzles that hang together by touching in just enough points. They're never total fits or misfits. ... We marry children who have grown up and still rejoice in being children .... [p. 15]"

"The daftest logic brings such sweet unrest."

"How can love's spaciousness be conveyed in the narrow confines of one syllable?"

"I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the lenght of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well."

"We can't enchant the world, which makes its own magic; but we can enchant ourselves by paying deep attention"

"Fear is danger to your body, but disgust is danger to your soul."

"Love is like a batik created from many emotional colors, it is a fabric whose pattern and brightness may vary."

"For me, life offers so many complexly appealing moments that two beautiful objects may be equally beautiful for different reasons and at different times. How can one choose?"

"Couples are jigsaw puzzles that hang together by touching in just enough points."

"To begin to understand the gorgeous fever that is consciousness, we must try to understand the senses and what they can tell us about the ravishing world we have the privilege to inhabit."

"And yet, words are the passkeys to our souls. Without them, we can't really share the enormity of our lives."

"Which is crueler, an old man's lost memories of a life lived, or a young man's lost memories of the life he meant to live?"

"Love seems to be as Essential as Sunlight"

"I watched her face switch among the radio stations of memory"

"There's no place you can go on the prairie that you don't hear the white noise of the wind, steady and rough as surf curling along a non-existant shore."

"Of all the errands life seems to be running, of all the mysteries that enchant us, love is my favorite"

"Libraries change lives. They are the soul of a people."