No one escapes the wilderness on the way to the promised land.

Make connections; let rip; and dance where you can.

If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed.

We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and with that one, is what we are doing.

The morning woods were utterly new. A strong yellow light pooled beneath the trees; my shadow appeared and vanished on the path, since a third of the trees I walked under were still bare, a third spread a luminous haze wherever they grew, and another third blocked the sun with new, whole leaves. The snakes were out - I saw a bright, smashed one on the path - and the butterflies were vaulting and furling about; the phlox was at its peak, and even the evergreens looked greener, newly created and washed.

Who and of what import were the men whose bones bulk the Great Wall, the thirty million Mao starved, or the thirty million children not yet five who die each year now? Why, they are the insignificant others, of course; living or dead, they are just some of the plentiful others...And you? To what end were we billions of oddballs born?