The earth is primarily comprised of iron, oxygen, love, silicon, magnesium, hope, sulfur, nickel, stubbornness, calcium, aluminum, and whimsy. Needless to say, this list also contains the elements of all good relationships.

We like our truths best served on a bed of lies. This is the key to advertising, politics, and fiction: knowing that, at the end of the day, we want a comforting story before we can go to sleep.

Autumn, dressed as Summer, stormed into his house and ate his good intentions. Half-starving, he staggered off into the woods (where he thought cooler days might be waiting) only to find a painter who told him, “never look for Fall — just create it.”

Motivation is like gasoline; you really can’t go anywhere without it. But unlike gasoline, which we have to buy, motivation is something we have to make for ourselves, sometimes out of the broken remnants of what used to fuel us.

Sometimes we wonder about things, questions to which there seem to be no answers. That is okay, though: wondering, even when no answers seem forthcoming, is no less useless than eating, knowing we’ll just be hungry again.

I can smell the pizza baking in the oven, and I wonder: how often do I pass by, not just good things, but favorite things, without really stopping to notice?

It might be daily.

The sea, like life itself, gives and takes in equal measures, always. The sea also – like life itself – occasionally shows itself as a thing far beyond our ability to master, or even comprehend in its immensity.

“Why did I go after her,” he asked me, “and follow her all the way to Europe, when I knew how it was going to turn out?”

“Because stories need endings,” I said, “and because love is a story we never really stop writing.”