When my mother didn't come back I realized that any moment could be the last. Nothing in life should simply be a passage from one place to another. Each walk should be taken as if it is the only thing you have left. You can demand something like this of yourself as an unattainable ideal. After that, you have to remind yourself about it every time you're sloppy about something. For me that means 250 times a day.

..That's where we humans make a mistake. We don't see the utterly amazing when it comes to us disguised as the ordinary.

Do you know what the mathematical expression is for longing? ... The negative numbers. The formalization of the feeling that you are missing something.

She was transparent, like a watercolor. As if she were about to dissolve in sound, in tones not yet created.

He boils milk with fresh ginger, a quarter of a vanilla bean, and tea that is so dark and fine-leaved that it looks like black dust. He strains it and puts cane sugar in both our cups. There's something euphorically invigorating and yet filling about it. It tastes the way I imagine the Far East must taste.

If you want to support others you have to stay upright yourself.

Confronted with people who have power, and who enjoy using it, I turn into a different person, a baser and meaner one.