What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness? You only truly, deeply appreciate and are grateful for something when you compare and contrast it to something worse.

The quality of owning freezes you forever in "I," and cuts you off forever from the "we.

The Mojave is a big desert and a frightening one. It’s as though nature tested a man for endurance and constancy to prove whether he was good enough to get to California.

Orange and speckled and fluted nudibranchs slide gracefully over the rocks, their skirts waving like the dresses of Spanish dancers.

The proofs that God does not exist are very strong, but in lots of people they are not as strong as the feeling that He does.

Luck, you see, brings bitter friends.

To a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself.