Paul Bogard Quotes & Sayings

My feeling is that an observer needs to see four hundred and fifty stars to get that feeling of infinitude, and be swept away ... and I didn't make that number up arbitrarily, that's the number of stars that are available once you get dimmer than third magnitude. So in the city, you see a dozen stars, a handful, and it's attractive to no one. And if there's a hundred stars in the sky it still doesn't do it. There's a certain tipping point where people will look and there will be that planetarium view. And now you're touching that ancient core, whether it's collective memories or genetic memories, or something else form way back before we were even human ... astronomer Bob Berman quoted in The End of Night — Paul Bogard

When I lie back and close my eyes, this farthest lip of beach right next to the end of the ocean feels like being up close to an enormous breathing being, the bass drum surf thump reverberating through the sand. Living out here with no lights, alone, you would indeed become sensitive to seasons, rhythms, weather, sounds- right up next to the sea, right up under the sky, like lying close to a lover's skin to hear blood and breath and heartbeat. — Paul Bogard

These are maybe the most exciting stars, those just above where sky meets land and ocean, because we so seldom see them, blocked as they usually are by atmosphere ... and, as I grow more and more accustomed to the dark, I realize that what I thought were still clouds straight overhead aren't clearing and aren't going to clear, because these are clouds of stars, the Milky Way come to join me. There's the primal recognition, my soul saying, yes, I remember. — Paul Bogard

At least when it comes to light pollution what happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas. — Paul Bogard

In these countless stars, in their clusters and colors and constellations, in the "shooting" showers of blazing dust and ice, we have always found beauty. And in this beauty, the overwhelming size of the universe has seemed less ominous, earth's own beauty more incredible. If indeed the numbers and distances of the night sky are so large that they become nearly meaningless, then let us find the meaning under our feet. — Paul Bogard

With my naked eye, on nights the moon climbs slowly, sometimes so dusted with rust and rose, brown, and gold tones that it nearly drips earth colors and seems intimately braided with Earth, it feels close, part of this world, a friend. But through the telescope, the moon seems- ironically- farther away ... the gray-white moon in a sea of black, its surface in crisp relief, brighter than ever before. I am struck too, by the scene's absolute silence. — Paul Bogard