When you consider something like death, after which (there being no news flash to the contrary) we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn't matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly.

Tranquillity hides in small spaces, and when found needs to be treasured, because you know it's a phantom that will slip away again.

The brain is only three pounds of blood, dream, and electricity, and yet from that mortal stew come Beethoven's sonatas. Dizzie Gillespie's jazz. Audrey Hepburn's wish to spend the last month of her life in Somalia, saving children.

Much of life becomes background, but it is the province of art to throw buckets of light into the shadows and make life new again.

We try to exile ourselves more and more from nature - not always consciously: We build houses; we dismiss nature; nature has to be outside, because we're inside. God forbid something like a cockroach comes inside, or some dust.

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

As fleeting emotions stalk it, a face can leak fear or the guilt of a forming lie.