An animal on a leash is not tamed by the owner. The owner is extending himself through the leash to that part of his personality which is pure dog, that part of him which just wants to eat, sleep, bark, hump chairs, wet the floor in joy, and drink out of a toilet bowl.

There is that unique moment when one confronts something new and astonishment begins.

Which is crueler, an old man's lost memories of a life lived, or a young man's lost memories of the life he meant to live?

The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one's curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sunstruck hills every day.

Knee-deep in the cosmic overwhelm, I’m stricken by the ricochet wonder of it all: the plain everythingness of everything, in cahoots with the everythingness of everything else.

I watched her face switch among the radio stations of memory

We can't enchant the world, which makes its own magic; but we can enchant ourselves by paying deep attention