Progo,' Meg asked. 'You memorized the names of all the stars - how many are there?' How many? Great heavens, earthling. I haven't the faintest idea.' But you said your last assignment was to memorize the names of all of them.' I did. All the stars in all the galaxies. And that's a great many.' But how many?' What difference does it make? I know their names. I don't know how many there are. It's their names that matter.

The shadows are deepening all around us. Now is the time when we must begin to see our world and ourselves in a different way.

It's hard to let go anything we love. We live in a world which teaches us to clutch. But when we clutch we're left with a fistful of ashes.

The part of us that has to be burned away is something like the deadwood on the bush; it has to go, to be burned in the terrible fire of reality, until there is nothing left but . . . what we are meant to be.

If I sit for a while, then my impatience, crossness, frustration, are indeed annihilated, and my sense of humor returns.

The best way to guide children without coercion is to be ourselves.

... nothing loved is ever lost or perished.