Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother.

The candle aimed its spark of light at heaven, like an artist who consumes himself to become divine.

I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer -- and what trees and seasons smelled like -- how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich.

A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then-the glory-so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished.

People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don't dream at all.

There's more beauty in the truth even if it is dreadful beauty.

There's something desirable about anything you're used to as opposed to something you're not.