But sometimes the world disrobes, slips its dress off a shoulder, stops time for a beat. If we look up at that moment, it's not due to any ability of ours to pierce the darkness, it's the world's brief bestowal. The catastrophe of grace.

Some stones are so heavy only silence helps you carry them!

The truth doesn't care what we think of it.

Important lessons: look carefully; record what you see. Find a way to make beauty necessary; find a way to make necessity beautiful.

I'm naive enough to think that love is always good no matter how long ago, no matter the circumstances.

When you are alone - at sea, in the polar dark - an absence can keep you alive. The one you love maintains your mind. But when she's merely across the city, this is an absence that eats you to the bone.

Love makes you see a place differently, just as you hold differently an object that belongs to someone you love. If you know one landscape well, you will look at all other landscapes differently. And if you learn to love one place, sometimes you can also learn to love another.