Nothing reveals more about the inner life of a people than their arts.

I consider fiction a very high-class form of lying. I enjoy and admire it enormously, but I don't think I'm very good at it.

Mystery causes a mental itch, which the brain tries to soothe with the balm of reasonable talk.

We are defined by how we place our attention.

We have vexed and bothered every plant and every animal on every continent.

The brain is only three pounds of blood, dream, and electricity, and yet from that mortal stew come Beethoven's sonatas. Dizzie Gillespie's jazz. Audrey Hepburn's wish to spend the last month of her life in Somalia, saving children.

Look at your feet. You are standing in the sky. When we think of the sky, we tend to look up, but the sky actually begins at the earth.