How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
The light from the moon is awesome, full and wan. It's not the luster of noonday it gives, but the luster of elf-light, utterly lambent and utterly dreamed. (4.37)
Complete opposites can be equally beautiful. We need the beauty of the sun to appreciate the beauty of the moon, and vice versa.
Quote #5
Yes, you say, as if you'd been asleep a hundred years, this is it, this is the real weather, the lavender light fading, the full moisture in your lungs, the heat from the pavement on your lips and palm—not the dry orange dust from horses' hooves, the salt sea, the sour Coke—but this solid air, the blood pumping up your thighs again, your fingers alive. (6.24)
Briefly taking yourself out of your day-to-day environment causes you to see the day-to-day differently upon your return. Dillard compares this to the Orpheus myth, in which the hero descends to the underworld to retrieve his dead wife. (Pro tip: Don't look back.)
Quote #6
You can buy your child a microscope and say grandly, "Look, child, at the Jungle in a Little Drop." The boy looks, plays around with pond water and bread mold and onion sprouts for a month or two, and then starts shooting baskets or racing cars, leaving the microscope on the basement table staring fixedly at its own mirror forever—and you say he's growing up. (7.42)
Growing up might mean a loss of innocence, but it doesn't have to mean a loss of curiosity. We humbly submit that science trumps basketball, although physics does help you make free throws.