Every moment is precious. And precarious.

Vladimir Nabokov was a writer who cared nothing for music and whose favorite sport was the pursuit, capture, and murder of butterflies. This explains many things; for example, the fact that Nabokov's novels, for all their elegance and wit, resemble nothing so much as butterflies pinned to a board: pretty but dead; symmetrical but stiff.

The national parks belong to everyone. To the people. To all of us. The government keeps saying so and maybe, in this one case at least, the government is telling the truth. Hard to believe, but possible.

As war and government prove, insanity is the most contagious of diseases.

Belief in God? An afterlife? I believe in rock: this apodictic rock beneath my feet.

A cowboy is a hired hand on the middle of a horse contemplating the hind end of a cow.

Music begins where words leave off. Music expresses the inexpressible. If there is a Kingdom of Heaven, it lies in music.