“[The modern age] knows nothing about isolation and nothing about silence. In our quietest and loneliest hour the automatic ice-maker in the refrigerator will cluck and drop an ice cube, the automat...”

“[Y]ou were too alert to the figurative possibilities of words not to see the phrase [angle of repose] as descriptive of human as well as detrital rest. As you said, it was too good for mere dirt; y...”

“There must be some other possibility than death or lifelong penance ... some meeting, some intersection of lines; and some cowardly, hopeful geometer in my brain tells me it is the angle at which t...”

“What do you mean, 'Angle of Repose?' she asked me when I dreamed we were talking about Grandmother's life, and I said it was the angle at which a man or woman finally lies down. I suppose it is; an...”

“[I]t is dangerous for a bride to be apologetic about her husband.”

“Hope was always out ahead of fact, possibility obscured the outlines of reality.”

“If desire causes suffering, it may be because we do not desire wisely, or that we are inexpert at obtaining what we desire. Instead of hiding our heads in a prayer cloth and building walls against ...”

“deprived of magic, wonder wanes”

“This is one of the great human mysteries: why do works of art about bad things such as loss and deprivation make us feel good?”

“None of us can choose where we shall love...”

“There are so many men, all endlessly attempting to sweep me off my feet. And there is one of you, trying just the opposite. Making sure my feet are firm beneath me, lest I fall.”

“Whales feel cohesion, a sense of community, of loyalty. The distress call of a lone whale is enough to prompt its entire pod to rush to its side- a gesture that lands them nose to nose in the same ...”

“There is a great risk that Christians may become idolaters if they lose the meaning of silence. Our words inebriate us; they confine us to what is created. Bewitched and imprisoned by the noise of ...”

“We tend to be unaware that stars rise and set at all. This is not entirelydue to our living in cities ablaze with electric lights which reflect back at us from our fumes, smoke, and artificial haze...”

“P15 - Our advanced technological society is rapidly making objects of us and subtly programming us into conformity to the logic of its system to the degree that this happens, we are also becoming s...”