Life is filled with small moments that seem prosaic until one has the distance to look back and see the chain of large moments they unleashed.

As Jeremy Bentham had asked about animals well over two hundred years ago, the question was not whether they could reason or talk, but could they suffer? And yet, somehow, it seemed to take more imagination for humans to identify with animal suffering than it did to conceive of space flight or cloning or nuclear fusion. Yes, she was a fanatic in the eyes of most of the country. . .Mostly, however, she just lacked patience for people who wouldn't accept her belief that humans inflicted needless agony on the animals around them, and they did so in numbers that were absolutely staggering.

We may talk a good game and write even better ones, but we never outgrow those small wounded things we were when we were five and six and seven.

He defined himself almost wholly in the negative: It was not who he was, it was who he was not.

With age comes acumen. With experience comes insight.

I have lived with magic and without magic, and I can tell you with certainty that a life with magic is better.

Now it is you who everyone presumes is so fragile. Wounded. Scarred. Maybe they're right. Perhaps you are. A nursery rhyme comes into your head, and, like an egg, you allow yourself to topple onto your side, your legs still pulled hard against your torso. You lie like that a long while, watching the chrome shell of the tape measure sparkle until the sun moves.