“For me happiness occurs arbitrarily: a moment of eye contact on a bus, where all at once you fall in love; or a frozen second in a park where it's enough that there are trees in the world.”

“There is a frozen moment after a really good shot to the face. A moment of shock, or paralysis where all you can do is blink.”

“... in a snap the world can fall down around you and leave you, for years and years, trying to get back to a place where once upon a time you were happy.”

“You know those ducks in that lagoon right near Central Park south?That little lake?By any chance you happen to know where they go?The ducks,When it gets all frozen over?”

“Talk of mysteries! — Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?”

“They say love's like a bus, and if you wait long enough another one will come along, but not in this place where the buses are slow and most of the cute ones are gay.”