When I go biking, I am mentally far far away from civilization. The world is breaking someone else's heart.

Of all the errands life seems to be running, of all the mysteries that enchant us, love is my favorite

A self is a frightening thing to waste, it's the lens through which one's whole life is viewed, and few people are willing to part with it, in death, or even imaginatively, in art.

For better or worse, zoos are how most people come to know big or exotic animals. Few will ever see wild penguins sledding downhill to sea on their bellies, giant pandas holding bamboo lollipops in China or tree porcupines in the Canadian Rockies, balled up like giant pine cones.

I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.

And yet, words are the passkeys to our souls. Without them, we can't really share the enormity of our lives.

Poetry reminds us of the truths about life and human nature that we knew all along, but forgot somehow because they weren't yet in memorable language.