No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way that simple joy could shake you.

Happiness isn’t the reward we retrieve after a long struggle. It arrives daily, in those clear moments when our hearts are tender, pricked by the embrace of a loved one, the beauty of a single flower, the majesty of the world in which we are central. Look over your shoulder at how far you’ve come and all the good things you’ve experienced and that is when you will see the smiling face of happiness.

Birth, life, and death -- each took place on the hidden side of a leaf.

I don't think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It's perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man.

Schools must stop being holding pens to keep energetic young people off the job market and off the streets. We stretch puberty out a long, long time.

At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough.