Life: a constellation of vital phenomena—organization, irritability, movement, growth, reproduction, adaptation.

She wanted to hold foreign syllables like mints on her tongue until they dissolved into fluency.

Inside us there is a word we cannot pronounce, and that is who we are.

But there had to be a quota. An upper limit to the number of miracles one is privileged to in a lifetime. How many times can a beloved reappear?

Perhaps our deepest love is already inscribed within us, so its object doesn't create a new word but instead allows us to read the one written.

We wear clothes, and speak, and create civilizations, and believe we are more than wolves. But inside us there is a word we cannot pronounce and that is who we are.

She wouldn't climb out of the bed for her sister, but she had climbed into a crater. She wouldn't cross a room, but she had crossed a continent.

For their entire lives, even before they met you, your mother and father held their love for you inside their hearts like an acorn holds an oak tree.

Nothing, she now knew, could be defined in exclusion, and every bug, pencil, and grass blade was a dictionary in itself, requiring the definitions of all things to fulfill its own.

Happiness came in moments of unpredictable loveliness.

How often is immense sadness mistaken for courage?

Mountains had taken the place of religion, had satisfied her religious sense, her need for adoration and worship as no service in any Cathedral, however sublime, had been able to do.

I go to eat dinner with my folks when I'm home. I think that's the trick.

I've had my fills of cocaine and pills.

Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the Romance of the unusual.

We are learning that the earth functions like an invisible organism. We are the various cells of one living being. Those who work to save the earth are its antibodies.

I went to a military school between the ages of six and 12 and later into the air force. You learn discipline and strength of character.

As long as you don't stop producing guns, you can't be a decent country!

Basically we should stop doing those things that are destructive to the environment, other creatures, and ourselves and figure out new ways of existing.

My family had a habit of collecting creatures that didn't always want to be pets. The first animal I can remember was a Lab named Zoe.

More minions!” he shouted. “Come to me!” That couldn’t be good. Another round of giant crocs and we’d be dead. Why don’t we get minions? I complained to Horus, but he didn’t answer.