The roaring of the wind is my wife and the stars through the window pane are my children. The mighty abstract idea I have of beauty in all things stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness.

'Daddy, how many whoppers are there in those tall trees?' After waking up in the car while driving through Calaveras Big Trees and hearing daddy say, 'Wow, that's a whopper of a tree.'

When you have snowflakes in the clouds in the sky and you have mountains, you get snow. That's how it works.

'A duck!... A baby duck.' (Squealing about a birthday card on her third birthday on Puerta Vallarta, Mexico.

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.''