“If all the people in the world were nice could we just get rid of the word mean?”

'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.'

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

'Families are about love overcoming emotional torture.'

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.