My mother always said I must be part Mongolian because of my lotus-pale complexion and squid-ink black hair.

Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.

Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains...

I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.

It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.

I swear I will not dishonor my soul with hatred, but offer myself humbly as a guardian of nature, as a healer of misery, as a messenger of wonder, as an architect of peace.

Wonder is the heaviest element on the periodic table. Even a tiny fleck of it stops time.

No matter how politely one says it, we owe our existence to the farts of blue-green algae.

Words are such small things, like confetti in the brain, and yet they are color and clarify everything, they can stain the mind or warp the feelings.

The heart is a museum, filled with the exhibits of a lifetime's loves.

We live on the leash of our senses. There is no way in which to understand the world without first detecting it through the radar-net of our senses.

Nurse Duckett found Yossarian wonderful and was already trying to change him.

I held a precious, beautiful butterfly in my hands but let it get away.

In movement class, you had to lie on the floor and get your alignment in to pass the class.

Everything I do is a direct creation of my hands, whether it is made in wood, plaster or clay.

I am unable to distinguish between the feeling I have for life and my way of expressing it.

There are as many atoms in each molecule of your DNA as there are stars in the typical galaxy. This is true for dogs, and bears, and every living thing. We are, each of us, a little universe.

Ten doors are opened if one door be shut: the finger is the interpreter of the dumb man's tongue.

Seats on the [Court] bench are not reserved for causes or interests. They're given to those who will uphold the rule of law so long as the nominee is well-qualified to interpret and apply the law.

The brave and bold persist even against fortune; the timid and cowardly rush to despair though fear alone.