“A walk with a two-year-old is very Zen; it is not about the end but the journey. He needs to pet the dog someone is walking; to roll down the slight incline to the church basement, and then roll again, and again, and again; to remind me of the place where the wasps (he calls them bees) live, then zoom past it.”

“This is a book about questioning what others believe to be true, not accepting ideas just because famous people say they are right. I think knowledge is more like a wave than a switch. Only very rarely do we go from being totally wrong to totally right--as a light turns off and on. Instead, what we learned before allows us to move on to what we can see next. We can surf ahead, but there will always be another challenge, another crest, another setp. We must always keep thinking and asking new questions.”

“We put our children through their paces in school not so that they will learn something, or master something, or meet any standards. No. We give them tools so that they can experience the joy, the passion, of creating. All we are doing is saying, “Here, if you know this, there is more you can make; there is another path you can map; there is another song you can compose.” School—from pre-K to postdoc programs—exists so that we can all build more from within ourselves and with our colleagues.”

“Zane just smiled and walked to open the door for him. “Let‟s go, doll.”Ty merely rolled his eyes as he walked past him.Give the man a weapon and suddenly he was all smiles again.”

“The last day i was home i took the rental car up old 14 behind the Sandia Mountains. as i drove north toward Santa Fe past Madrid I rolled the window down halfway and let the cold, brisk, February air come into the car. I smelled the pinon trees and the damp earth. The Gray came over me. My life flashed through my heart in one deep rush of feeling. When I made the turn around the mountain to the west, the mesas and valleys spread out before me under the orange and gold horizon. The sun hit me like a wave that flooded out the past and dissolved any idea of the future, and I felt okay and whole for about twenty minutes.”

“SUMMER DEEP""Summer deep is in the hills again His lady is a lioness Winds of birds blow through the fields again Invaders from the true worlds A coat of grapes is on my back again I ride upon my zebra Pterodactyl beak hat on my brow The truth is like a stranger Be like you could All my friends say.”

“When backed into a corner, a victim has two options: he can lie down and die, or, he can fight regardless of the odds.”