“I may never be happy, but tonight I am content. Nothing more than an empty house, the warm hazy weariness from a day spent setting strawberry runners in the sun, a glass of cool sweet milk, and a shallow dish of blueberries bathed in cream. When one is so tired at the end of a day one must sleep, and at the next dawn there are more strawberry runners to set, and so one goes on living, near the earth. At times like this I'd call myself a fool to ask for more...”

“One day, I watched the sun setting forty-four times......You know...when one is so terribly sad, one loves sunsets.”

“People think I'm crazy to put myself through such torture, though I would argue otherwise. Somewhere along the line we seem to have confused comfort with happiness. Dostoyevsky had it right: 'Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.' Never are my senses more engaged than when the pain sets in. There is a magic in misery. Just ask any runner.”

“The moon is more interesting than the unchanging sun. That is surely why it is used in poetry and the sun is not—unless one talks of dawn or dusk, when the sun briefly hovers on the edge of day.”

“More are men's ends mark'd than their lives before:The setting sun, and music at the close,As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,Writ in remembrance more than things long past”

“One day, someone showed me a glass of water that was half full. And he said, "Is it half full or half empty?" So I drank the water. No more problem.”