Where you find quality, you will find a craftsman, not a quality-control expert.

Turn your love into promises, that when you doubt your love, you may simply ask, "Am I keeping my promises?"

Stored away in some brain cell is the image of a long-departed aunt you haven't thought of in 30 years. Stored away in another cell is the image of a pink pony stitched on your first set of baby pajamas. All it takes to get that aunt mounted on the back of that pony is to eat a hunk of meatloaf immediately before going to bed.

There is a tendency to see divine intervention in things that happen in the normal course of miracles.

There is in every artist's studio a scrap heap of discarded works in which the artist's discipline prevailed against his imagination.

There is a lesson we learn early and harmlessly, or late and traumatically - that there are things we can break that our parents can't fix.

In every gardener there is a child who believes in The Seed Fairy.