The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one's curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sunstruck hills every day.

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.

Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees on just what it is.

We can't enchant the world, which makes its own magic; but we can enchant ourselves by paying deep attention

Not much is known about alligators. They don't train well. And they're unwieldy and rowdy to work with in laboratories.

Our relationship with nature has changed radically, irreversibly, but by no means all for the bad. Our new epoch is laced with invention. Our mistakes are legion, but our talent is immeasurable.

I don't want to be a passenger in my own life.