She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.

We are here to witness the creation and to abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other. We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us. We witness our generation and our times. We watch the weather. Otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house.

A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order - willed, faked, and so brought into being.

People who take photographs during their whole vacation won't remember their vacation. They'll only remember what photographs they took.

To crank myself up I stood on a jack and ran myself up. I tightened myself like a bolt. I inserted myself in a vise-clamp and wound the handle till the pressure built. I drank coffee in titrated doses. It was a tricky business, requiring the finely tuned judgment of a skilled anesthesiologist. There was a tiny range within which coffee was effective, short of which it was useless, and beyond which, fatal.

Johnston's books are beautifully written and among the funniest I have ever read.

Experiencing the present purely is being empty and hollow; you catch grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall.