Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.

Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.

Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains...

I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.

It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.

I swear I will not dishonor my soul with hatred, but offer myself humbly as a guardian of nature, as a healer of misery, as a messenger of wonder, as an architect of peace.

Wonder is the heaviest element on the periodic table. Even a tiny fleck of it stops time.

No matter how politely one says it, we owe our existence to the farts of blue-green algae.

Words are such small things, like confetti in the brain, and yet they are color and clarify everything, they can stain the mind or warp the feelings.

The heart is a museum, filled with the exhibits of a lifetime's loves.

We live on the leash of our senses. There is no way in which to understand the world without first detecting it through the radar-net of our senses.

The only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache.

Fear is a part of life. It's a warning mechanism. That's all. It tells you when there's danger around. Its job is to help you survive. Not cripple you into being unable to do it.

Miracles are not for grown men, they are for children or unbelievers.

There are a tremendous amount of environmental issues that are on the table.

The artist... may suppose that ideas are his chief currency; but unless he is also attuned to feelings, in life and in art, he will not move his fellow human beings.

I do have the strength. Leadership, leadership is not about attacking people and disparaging people. Leadership is about creating a serious strategy to deal with the threat of our time.

After playing now for 60 years, it's still very challenging for me to play a simple melody and have it clean and touch the reed at the proper time in the proper way.

Lord knows I had what you could call many fashion Don'ts in my day.

... God gave you just one mouth but He gave you two ears, so you should listen twice as much as you speak

I don't like perpetuating the stereotype of black males being drug dealers, and criminals.