caves so often symbolize rebirth. It's a hidden space, an expected, inscrutable space. Strange things live in there - eyeless salamanders, albino fish, a prophet's epiphanies.

going into a cave might be like going inside one's own mind, crawling around in the pitch-black, nook-and-crannied labyrinth of the human psyche.

Things in the margins, including humans who wander there, are often on the brink of becoming someone else, or something else, whose memory may not include the significance of old markers.

Someday we'll look back on this and it will all seem funny.

Peter, you're twelve years old. I'm ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.

One day, I decided to be an island. I took off my clothes and walked into the sea, then floated there, bobbing along with the tide, suspended by my inflatable tube and water wings.

He just wanted to get through his uninteresting day, so he could cross over into the night, and find his way to the red headed light that brightened the black sky.

Leisure is non-work for the sake of work. Leisure is the time spent recovering from work and in the frenzied but hopeless attempt to forget about work.

Hey, you created me! I didn't create some loser alter-ego to make myself feel better. Take some responsibility!

Calmness is a huge gift. And once you master it, you will be able to respond in a useful way to every difficult situation that decides to walk into your heart.

It is not a bad thing in a tale that you understand only half of it.

Your absence weighs more than someone else’s presence

A moral, sensible, and well-bred manWill not affront me, and no other can.