'Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.'

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

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.'

'Divorce is when mommy and daddy yell at each other then they spread apart. Then they put up a 'for sale' sign in front of the house and they spread farther and farther apart until they can't come back ever again and it's very sad.' (teaching her 4-year old brother)