Variety is the pledge that matter makes to living things.

Ecstasy is what everyone craves - not love or sex, but a hot-blooded, soaring intensity, in which being alive is a joy and a thrill. That enravishment doesn't give meaning to life, and yet without it life seems meaningless.

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

Touch seems to be as essential as sunlight.

I believe consciousness is brazenly physical, a raucous mirage the brain creates to help us survive.

Disassociating, mindfulness, transcendence-whatever the label-it's a sort of loophole in our contract with reality, a form of self-rescue.

We would lie on coral sand, below sugary stars, watching Cassiopeia mount her throne and the Great Bear wash its paws in the South. I would say, "I have a secret to tell you." And, folding me in your arms, boyish and sly, you would answer: "Whisper it into my mouth.