It gives me a deep comforting sense that Things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal.

Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived. The odors of fruits waft me to my southern home, to my childhood frolics in the peach orchard. Other odors, instantaneous and fleeting, cause my heart to dilate joyously or contract with remembered grief. Even as I think of smells, my nose is full of scents that start awake sweet memories of summers gone and ripening fields far away.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.

My friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges.

I cannot remember how I felt when the light went out of my eyes. I suppose I felt it was always night and perhaps I wondered why the day did not come.

I am a child of my generation, and I rejoice that I live in such splendidly disturbing times.