A dog can't think that much about what he's doing, he just does what feels right.

How could two people get the same set of parts and make such different constructions? But then, there was rising. That had to be taken into account. What could a doormat rear but a pair of boots?

But a spontaneous traveler inevitably will end up with the tummy gauge suddenly on empty, in some place where cuisine is not really the point: a museum cafeteria, or late-night snack bar across from the concert hall. Eating establishments where cuisine isn't the point—is that a strange notion?

Thousands of ordinary people were part of this metropolis, but their homes would have been perishable wattle and thatch, stuccoed with lime and mud. Every trace of their living has returned to the earth now, except for the limestone temples of art and worship. The things made of ambition, which rise higher than daily bread.

No matter what happens on God's green earth, Father acts like it's a movie he's already seen and we're just dumb for not knowing how it comes out.

Why should it feel so risky to count concretely on a future?

First, I got myself born. The worst of the job was up to me.

At sunrise it always seems like you've got a good crack at getting everything done, but at sunset you know that you didn't.

History is not good news or bad news, it's just one big story unreeling. There are no small parts, only small actors.

Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain. Almost no one gets a chance to alter the course of human events on purpose, in the exact same way they wish for it to be altered.

No, you shouldn't have come here. But you are here, so yes, you should be here. There are more words in the world then yes and no.

Oh, it's a fine and useless enterprise, trying to fix destiny. That trail leads straight back to the time before we ever lived, and into that deep well it's easy to cast curses like stones on our ancestors. But that's nothing more than cursing ourselves and all that made us. Had I not married a preacher named Nathan Price, my particular children would never have seen the light of this world. I walked through the valley of my fate, is all, and learned to love what I could lose