Wonder is the heaviest element on the periodic table. Even a tiny fleck of it stops time.

Nature is also great fun. To pretend that nature isn't fun is to miss much of the joy of being alive.

Tranquillity hides in small spaces, and when found needs to be treasured, because you know it's a phantom that will slip away again.

History is an agreed-upon fiction.

We humans are obsessed with lights...Perhaps it is our way of hurling the constellations back at the sky.

There was nothing to do but wait. It is always like this for naturalists, and for poets--the long hours of travel and preparation, and then the longer hours of waiting. All for that one electric, pulse-revving vision when the universe suddenly declares itself.

Poetry is an act of distillation. It takes contingency samples, is selective. It telescopes time. It focuses what most often floods past us in a polite blur.