What mattered to Abu was the music of the sentence. 'A shadow does not belong to the object that casts it.' To Abu, it was a little poem. And in general, it was the poetics, the music of things that tossed his confetti.

To an artist a metaphor is as real as a dollar.

Normality is the Great Neurosis of civilization.

Political activism is seductive because it seems to offer the possibility that one can improve society, make things better, without going through the personal ordeal of rearranging one's perceptions and transforming one's self.

You've heard of people calling in sick. You may have called in sick a few times yourself. But have you ever thought about calling in well

salvation is for the feeble, that's what I think. I don't want salvation, I want life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb.

The author isn't altogether certain that there is any such thing as exaggeration. Our brains permit us to use such a wee fraction of their resources that, in a sense, everything we experience is a reduction. We employ drugs, yoga techniques and poetics - and a thousand more clumsy methods - in an effort just to bring things back up to normal.