Everything was a miracle until we solved it. ... the first man who ever saw a flying fish probably thought he was witnessing a miracle - and the first man who ever described a flying fish was doubtless called a liar.

No experience in this world has ever been cathartic without the willing participation of the individual. Life does not automatically bestow wisdom or growth upon anyone just for showing up.

Most of us, even if only for two minutes in our lives, have experienced at some time or another an inexplicable and random sense of complete bliss, unrelated to anything that was happening in the outside world.

A glorious failure can sometimes be more life affirming than a cautious win.

Desperate love is always the toughest way to do it.

Your home is whatever in this world you love more than you love yourself.

Astonishingly, at some point, a sputtering torch was thrust into her hands. Alma did not see who gave it to her. She had never before been entrusted with fire. The torch spit sparks and sent chunks of flaming tar spinning into the air behind her as she bolted across the cosmos-the only body in the heavens who was not held to a strict elliptical path. Nobody stopped her. She was a comet. She did not know that she was not flying.