As a biologist, I can't think of myself as anything but an animal among animals and plant.

Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.

If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life.

Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.

Finally, cooking is good citizenship. It's the only way to get serious about putting locally raised foods into your diet, which keeps farmlands healthy and grocery money in the neighborhood.

We came from Bethlehem, Georgia bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle.

Maybe life doesn't get any better than this, or any worse, and what we get is just what we're willing to find: small wonders, where they grow.

Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.

It's what you do that makes your soul.

Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.

How much you can love others without expectations will define who you are.

One of the keys to achieving understanding is humility.

Mel exhaled. "Why are you forcing me into the voice-of-reason role? You know that never works out for us.

Toil is the true knight's pastime.

I think it is most important for a teacher to play the pieces and studies that are being played by the student.

The flatterer does not think highly enough of himself or of others.

If you have one volcano in the world, that one volcano puts out more carbon dioxide than everything man puts out.

My black-and-white work is more of a celebration and the color work became more of a critique of society.

Unhappiness is too common to call for special measures.

If we're really committed to growth, we never stop discovering new dimensions of self and self-expression .