“Like the sundial, my paint box counts no hours but sunny ones.”

“This place is alive," Sunni said in wonder. "Things are moving. Inside a painting.”

“If after I read a poem the world looks like that poem for 24 hours or so I'm sure it's a good one—and the same goes for paintings. ”

“I knew my box of paints, stored away on the bedroom shelf of my small house across the ocean, could never create such colors.”

“And the time sundials tellMay be minutes and hours. But it may just as wellBe seconds and sparkles, or seasons and flowers.No, I don't think of time as just minutes and hours.Time can be heartbeats, or bird songs, or miles,Or waves on a beach, or ants in their files(They do move like seconds—just watch their feet go:Tick-tick-tick, like a clock). You'll learn as you growThat whatever there is in a garden, the sunCounts up on its dial. By the time it is doneOur sundial—or someone's— will certainly addAll the good things there are. Yes, and all of the bad.And if anyone's here for the finish, the sunWill have told him—by sundial—how well we have done.How well we have done, or how badly. Alas,That is a long thought. Let me hope we all pass.”

“One foot in front of the other, counting tiles on the floor so I don't have to focus the blur of painted smiles, fake faces.”