I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

Jonathon Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull's life is so short, and with these gone from his thought, he lived a fine life indeed.

Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustable variety of life.

Pain and love -- the whole of life, in short -- cannot be looked on as a disease just because they make us suffer.

One cricket said to another --
come, let us be ridiculous, and say love!
love love love love love
let us be absurd, woman, and say hate!
hate hate hate hate hate
and then let us be angelic
       and say nothing.