In the absence of touching and being touched, people of all ages can sicken and grow touched starved. Touch seems to be as essential as sunlight.

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. We walk through it, yell into it, rake leaves, wash the dog, and drive cars in it. We breathe it deep within us. With every breath, we inhale millions of molecules of sky, heat them briefly, and then exhale them back into the world.

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?

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

Flight is nothing but an attitude in motion.

Don't just live the length of your life - live the width of it as well.

Life is a thing that mutates without warning, not always in enviable ways. All part of the improbable adventure of being alive, of being a brainy biped with giant dreams on a crazy blue planet.