Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world.
Libraries change lives. They are the soul of a people.
Love is the best school, but the tuition is high and the homework can be painful.
Tranquillity hides in small spaces, and when found needs to be treasured, because you know it’s a phantom that will slip away again.
And yet, words are the passkeys to our souls. Without them, we can’t really share the enormity of our lives.
Poetry is an act of distillation. It takes contingency samples, is selective. It telescopes time. It focuses what most often floods past us in a polite blur.
Life is a thing that mutates without warning, not always in enviable ways. All part of the improbable adventure of being alive, of being a brainy biped with giant dreams on a crazy blue planet.
If cynicism is inevitable as one ages, so is the yearning for innocence. To children heaven is being an adult, and to adults heaven is being children again.
It’s animal by animal that you save a species.
I like handling newborn animals. Fallen into life from an unmappable world, they are the ultimate immigrants, full of wonder and confusion.
Not much is known about alligators. They don’t train well. And they’re unwieldy and rowdy to work with in laboratories.
Who you are isn’t tied solely to what you say, even though it may feel that way to you now.
Who would drink from a cup when they can drink from the source?
Adult bats don’t weigh much. They’re mainly fur and appetite.
Nothing reveals more about the inner life of a people than their arts...
Though we marry as adults, we don’t marry adults. We marry children who have grown up and still rejoice in being children, especially if we’re creative.
The only and absolute perfect union of two is when a baby hangs suspended in its mother’s womb, like a tiny madman in a padded cell, attached to her, feeling her blood and hormones, and moods play through its body, feeling her feelings.
We ogle plants and animals up close on television, the Internet and in the movies. We may not worship the animals we see, but we still regard them as necessary physical and spiritual companions. Technological nature can’t completely satisfy that yearning.
Human beings are sloshing sacks of chemicals on the move.
Adventure is not something you travel to find. It’s something you take with you, or you’re not going to find it when you arrive.