When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. I was greatly excited at the thought of the first lucky passerby who would receive a gift in this way, regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe. . . . I've been thinking about seeing. There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand.

Nature's silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block.

I feel as though I stand at the foot of an infinitely high staircase, down which some exuberant spirit is flinging tennis ball after tennis ball, eternally, and the one thing I want in the world is a tennis ball.

The interior life is often stupid.

Time is the warp and matter the weft of the woven texture of beauty in space, and death is the hurling shuttle.

He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. He is careful of what he learns, for that is what he will know.

We are here to witness the creation and to abet it.