That's why we feel so disoriented, irritated even, when these touchstones from our past are altered. We don't like it when our hometown changes, even in small ways. It's unsettling. The playground! It used to be right here, I swear. Mess with our hometown, and you're messing with our past, with who we are. Nobody likes that.

A confused mind is one that is open to the possibility of change.

A mystery is not a puzzle waiting to be solved, but rather something for which there is no human solution. Mystery's offspring is not frustration but awe, and that sense of awe grows in tandem with knowledge.

We are shaped not only by our current geography but by our ancestral one as well. Americans, for instance, retain a frontier spirit even though the only frontier that remains is that vast open space between the SUV and strip mall. We are our past.

Compromise is a skill, and like all skills it atrophies from lack of use.

There's no one on the island telling them they're not good enough, so they just go ahead and sing and paint and write.

Genius is not only a what or a who, it is a where. It is grounded in a place every single time.