And I realized as I walked through the neighborhood how each house could contain a completely different reality. In a single block, there could be fifty seperate worlds. Nobody ever really knew what was going on just next door.

Memory is the fourth dimension to any landscape.

I think we're starved for a life of the senses. We're in the garage, we're in the car, we drive to work, we're in a windowless cubicle that's gray and beige. In a way, it's funny that we consider ourselves an advanced culture, because people who live in so-called primitive environments still enjoy the richness of the smells, colors, and sounds of our world. We all crave that.

A cliché is like a coin that has been handled too much. Once language has been overly handled, it no longer leaves a clear imprint.

Just because a poet said something didn’t mean it was true, only that it sounded good.

I wondered where he was now whether I would ever hear him again. Whether someone would love him, someday show him what beauty mean't.

Beauty was empty as a gourd, vain as a parakeet. But it had power. It smelled of musk and oranges and made you close your eyes in a prayer.