My world was very limited in size and experience. Small things took on extra importance, at least to a child.

I had always been a boy in this place, and many of the trees and rocks and streams had been old men when I knew them. Some had died. All had changed. I knew that. I had changed the most.

The world bein’ so small ain’t always a good thing for those of us who ain’t searchin’ for new and different stuff.

One of the worst things I’ve learned about getting older is that there seems to be more change that you don’t like than there was when you were younger and you can’t do nothin’ about it.

Just make sure the day doesn’t pass without sayin’ what’s in your heart. Sometimes you pass up those chances and they’re gone forever.

Our bird of hope was being denied the altitude it sought, just free enough to fly dangerously close to the reality of the treetops.

As an adult I had mastered the art of looking without seeing and listening without hearing and eating without tasting and maybe even existing without living.

Sometimes, you need to spit stuff out in words to get it better arranged in your head. I figure if you never talk about it, it just picks its own spot and lays there and festers.

What a wonderful sadness to miss the one you have loved forever, it seems, and know that she is waiting at home.

Memories with laughter are the best ones to keep.

I assumed that looking back reminded older guys of what they had shot at and missed, the what-ifs, the good memories, the bad, the people left behind, the people who moved on.

The task of modern man is not to find his inner self, but to create himself.

Daja: "He and Rosethorn work together? They hate each other." Lark: "I didn't say they liked it.- Daja and Lark referring to Rosethorn and Crane's cooperation on finding the cures for new diseases

Nothing can be cut away. Even the worst of our memories is part of the foundation that keeps us in the world.

Why is a woman's sexuality always under so much scrutiny? Why can't she do exactly what she please without being called a million things?

Never make a promise in haste.

Mankind is connected in ways it does not understand - even in dreams.

I'll take your breath any way you give it to me, Shura.

To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.

You retain your health only so long as you are willing.

So that when I came from Panama... my family was exiled in 1973 and they went to Miami.