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

Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put us in an impossible situation.

“I like lights on buildings, because without them you wouldn't be able to see all the beauty in the world.” (About the lights on the football field at the local highschool.)

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.'