"It is difficult, my dear Lucius, to escape becoming the person others believe one to be. A slave is twice enslaved, once by his chains and once agai… - Thornton Wilder

The planting of trees is the least self-centered of all that we do. It is a purer act of faith than the procreation of children.

Everybody should eavesdrop once in a while. There's nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head.

Once you have swung a pickax that will reveal the curve of a street four thousand years covered over which was once an active, much-traveled highway, you are never quite the same again.