“If only the scientific experts could come up with something to get it out of our minds. One cup of fixit fizzle that will lift the dirt from our lives, soften our hardness, protect our inner parts, improve our processing, reduce our yellowing and wrinkling, improve our natural color, and make us sweet and good.”

“Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts...”

“Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts”

“It's just this: that there are places we all come from-deep-rooty-common places- that makes us who we are. And we disdain them or treat them lightly at our peril. We turn our backs on them at the risk of self-contempt. There is a sense in which we need to go home again-and can go home again. Not to recover home, no. But to sanctify memory.”

“Machines and relatives get most of the yelling. But never trees. As for people, well, the Solomon islanders may have a point. Yelling at living thing does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts.”

“Every person passing through this life will unknowingly leave something and take something away. Most of this “something” cannot be seen or heard or numbered or scientifically detected or counted. It’s what we leave in the minds of other people and what they leave in ours. Memory. The census doesn’t count it. Nothing counts without it.”

“to understand our love they'd have to turn the world upside down”