The great thing about my life is that everything I've done is a result of what I was when I was 12 or 13.

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder.

[His] library was a fine dark place bricked with books, so anything could happen there and always did. All you had to do was pull a book from the shelf and open it and suddenly the darkness was not so dark anymore.

I’m the thing you most desire, you represent the thing I least desire, death. It’s just the opposite of love.

And suddenly everything, absolutely everything, was there.

God, how we get our fingers in each other's clay. That's friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of each other.