“In the long run, most of us spend about fifteen minutes total in the entanglements of passion, and the rest of our days looking back on it, humming the tune.”

Households that have lost the soul of cooking from their routines may not know what they are missing: the song of a stir-fry sizzle, the small talk of clinking measuring spoons, the yeasty scent of rising dough, the painting of flavors onto a pizza before it slides into the oven.

Parenting is something that happens mostly while you’re thinking of something else.

The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don’t know.

Back then I was still appalled that God would set down his barefoot boy and girl dollies into an Eden where, presumably, He had just turned loose elephantiasis and microes that eat the human cornea. Now I understand, God is not just rooting fo the dollies.

As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer’s long hair in water. I knew the weight was there but it didn’t touch me. Only when I stopped did the slick, dark stuff of it come floating around my face, catching my arms and throat till I began to drown. So I just didn’t stop.

The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.

If you’re standing in the manure pile, it’s somebody’s job to mention the stink.

All of the promises of politicians, generals, madmen, and crusaders that war can create peace have yet to be borne out.

Every time I step onto an airplane, I turn to the right and take a good, hard stare into the maw of the engine. I don’t know what I’m looking for. I just do it.

No human eye had looked at this moth before; no one would see its friends. So much detail goes unnoticed in the world.

It’s one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else.

He needs to go rub his soul against life.

I grew up aware of all the people I depended on and who depended on me.

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.

The first steps toward stewardship are awareness, appreciation, and the selfish desire to have the things around for our kids to see. Presumably the unselfish motives will follow as we wise up.

You could love your crazy people, even admire them, instead of resenting that they’re not self-sufficient.

It is important to possess a short-term pessimism and a long-term optimism.

Nothing that rest on some contradictory basis shall succeed or last in the long run (“ne saurait réussir ou durer, à la longue”, Fr.); all that involve (or imply…) a contradiction is fatally destined, early or late, to disintegrate and disappear.

It must be all the same to the citizens (“ressortissants”, Fr.) of a country that their governing (those in power) speak such language or such other (“telle langue ou telle autre”, Fr.).

As long as men will not be freed from their errors and delusions, humanity will not be able to go towards (“marcher vers”, Fr.) the accomplishment of its true destinies.

There is nothing wrong with being well off as long as money has a social and ethical value and is not the object of one’s own greed.

Buy me a drink, sing me a song; take me as I come, cause I can’t stay long.

Likewise that it must be all the same to them that these adhere to such or such religion, so long as a full (or complete) liberty is equally garantee for everyone.

I long to create something that can’t be used to keep us passive: I want to write a script about plumbing, how every pipe is joined to every other.