According to science, the universe began as a swirl of gas that, as it cooled, spun off the Ten Commandments.

A man finds love and is satisfied. A woman finds love and insists on turning it into happiness.

A cat, after being scolded, goes about its business. A dog slinks off into a corner and pretends to be doing a serious self-reappraisal.

In a dark moment I ask, "How can anyone bring a child into this world?" And the answer rings clear, "Because there is no other world, and because the child has no other way into it."

There are days in retirement that are the waking equivalent of a dreamless sleep, if you know what I mean.

Sometimes two people need to step apart and make a space between that each might see the other anew, in a glance across a room or silhouetted against the moon.

It's not that perfection cannot be achieved. It's that it's so hard to stop there.