“the way people understood things had a lot to do with the way people were, how they had been shaped, what the wanted; tricks of rhetoric would not shift them.”

“...children are at heart selfish, and reasonably so, for they are programmed for survival.”

“Only when you are grown up, perhaps only when you have children yourself, do you fully understand that your own parents had a full and intricate existence before you were born.”

“He closed his eyes. This bed was a wedding gift from friends he had not seen in years. He tried to remember their names, but they were gone. In it, or on it, his marriage had begun and, six years l...”

“The land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts.”

“At the age of 45, most days in Tucson were spent feeling like I was on the summit of Mauna Kea, as I was exhibiting debilitating health symptoms that corresponded to what I saw at very high altitud...”

“The hour is only long thus, if you've waited.”

“In a universe where all life is in movement, where ever fact seen in perspective is totally engaging, we impose stillness on lively young bodies, distort reality to dullness, make action drudgery. ...”

“If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter. ”

“When you're a kid all you know is that your dad puts on his suit or overalls and vanishes from your life until nightfall. Sometimes my pops came back exhausted and scarlet-eyed, as if he'd been eng...”

“Naught but leaves brushed in the wind, stemming from the forest behind my house. Oh, and of course, the wildlife seized every chance to tell the stars who they were; they hooted, howled, and growle...”

“I dont have a philosophy: I have senses...If I talk about Nature, its not because I know what it is,But because I love it, and thats why I love it,Because when you love you never know what you love...”

“I have been wrongly accused; and you, ma'am, and everybody else, will now think me wicked.""We shall think you what you prove yourself to be, my child. Continue to act as a good girl, and you will ...”