Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
For the longest time I didn't realize I was creative - I just thought I was strange.
There is that unique moment when one confronts something new and astonishment begins.
Home is where the heart is, we say, rubbing the flint of one abstraction against another.
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.
Who you are isn't tied solely to what you say, even though it may feel that way to you now.
Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees on just what it is.
the biggest threat to the religious experience may well come from organized religion itself.
Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.
Mystery causes a mental itch, which the brain tries to soothe with the balm of reasonable talk.
I believe consciousness is brazenly physical, a raucous mirage the brain creates to help us survive.
Nature is also great fun. To pretend that nature isn't fun is to miss much of the joy of being alive.
Nature is more like a seesaw than a crystal, a never-ending conga line of bold moves and corrections.
The knowing, I told myself, is only a vapor of the mind, and yet it can wreck havok with one's sanity.
habit, a particularly insidious thug who chokes passion and smothers love. Habit puts us on autopilot.
Of all the errands life seems to be running, of all the mysteries that enchant us, love is my favorite
Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.
We humans are obsessed with lights...Perhaps it is our way of hurling the constellations back at the sky.
It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.
Part of the irony of environmentalism is questing for solutions when you know you're part of the problem.
... love is an act of sedition, a revolt against reason, an uprising in the body politic, a private mutiny.
When I go biking, I am mentally far far away from civilization. The world is breaking someone else's heart.
My mother always said I must be part Mongolian because of my lotus-pale complexion and squid-ink black hair.
And yet, words are the passkeys to our souls. Without them, we can't really share the enormity of our lives.
We can't enchant the world, which makes its own magic; but we can enchant ourselves by paying deep attention
What an odd, ruminating, noisy, self-interrupting conversation we conduct with ourselves from birth to death.
Love is like a batik created from many emotional colors, it is a fabric whose pattern and brightness may vary.
Hurricane season brings a humbling reminder that, despite our technologies, most of nature remains unpredictable.
Not much is known about alligators. They don't train well. And they're unwieldy and rowdy to work with in laboratories.
In Manhattan last month I heard a woman borrowing the jargon of junkies to say to another, 'Want to do some chocolate?'
I am a great fan of the universe, which I take literally: as one. All of it interests me, and it interests me in detail.
Which is crueler, an old man's lost memories of a life lived, or a young man's lost memories of the life he meant to live?
Happiness doesn't require laughter, only well-being and a sense that the world is breaking someone else's heart, not mine.
I consider fiction a very high-class form of lying. I enjoy and admire it enormously, but I don't think I'm very good at it.
Wonder is a bulky emotion. When you let it fill your heart and mind, there isn't room for anxiety, distress or anything else.
We evolved as creatures knitted into the fabric of nature, and without its intimate truths, we can find ourselves unraveling.
Our sense of safety depends on predictability, so anything living outside the usual rules we suspect to be an outlaw, a ghoul.
Adventure is not something you travel to find. It's something you take with you, or you're not going to find it when you arrive.
A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.
Much of life becomes background, but it is the province of art to throw buckets of light into the shadows and make life new again.
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.
Tranquillity hides in small spaces, and when found needs to be treasured, because you know it's a phantom that will slip away again.
Shaped a little like a loaf of French country bread, our brain is a crowded chemistry lab, bustling with nonstop neural conversations.
Look at your feet. You are standing in the sky. When we think of the sky, we tend to look up, but the sky actually begins at the earth.
I'm sure civilizations will still evolve through play, or rather as play, since that seems to be a fundamental mechanism of our humanity.
Disassociating, mindfulness, transcendence-whatever the label-it's a sort of loophole in our contract with reality, a form of self-rescue.
Artificial intelligence is growing up fast, as are robots whose facial expressions can elicit empathy and make your mirror neurons quiver.
I like handling newborn animals. Fallen into life from an unmappable world, they are the ultimate immigrants, full of wonder and confusion.
It's essential to tailor rehab to what impassions someone. The brain gradually learns by riveting its attention-through endless repetitions.
What would dawn have been like, had you awakened? It would have sung through your bones. All I can do this morning is let it sing through mine.