hope and uncertainty [are] the twin ingredients necessary for romance to thrive. ... Nothing begins with so much excitement and hope, or fails as often, as love.

Home is where the heart is, we say, rubbing the flint of one abstraction against another.

Though we marry as adults, we don't marry adults. We marry children who have grown up and still rejoice in being children, especially if we're creative.

The knowing, I told myself, is only a vapor of the mind, and yet it can wreck havok with one's sanity.

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

Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains...

Words are such small things, like confetti in the brain, and yet they are color and clarify everything, they can stain the mind or warp the feelings.