Tiny Beautiful Things Quotes & Sayings

Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It's like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it's hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you've gained all the experiences it had. — Andy Weir

The butterfly wallpaper was now gone. It had been replaced by a moody, breathless wallpaper of silver, sprinkled with tiny white dots that looked like stars. It made her feel an odd sense of anticipation, like last night. Grandpa Vance couldn't have come in last night and done this.
Did it really change on its own?
It was beautiful, this wallpaper. It made the room look like living in a cloud. She put her hand against the wall by her dresser. It was soft, like velvet. How could her mother not have told her a room like this existed? She'd never mentioned it. Not even in a bedtime story. — Sarah Addison Allen

How could I explain to a beautiful lady in a silk dress that when I picked up her baby girl, I felt that lady's long-ago chubby shape in my arms, smelled her sunshine-touched hair? That years and years of tiny memories flitted past my heart like a flock of birds spinning on invisible air? It was the smell of the little girls, slightly wet, somewhat soapy, the smell of porridge supper, and the taste of kissed-away tears. Here in my arms were the best parts of life, going on, blooming like a strong tree. — Nancy E. Turner

Imagine the universe is like this cloth." Philippos said, lifting up an old rag off the ground. "There are thousands of tiny threads woven in tiny, little patterns. If you follow one thread it will lead you to the end, but also you'll see that more threads are connected to it. What if you decide to follow another? Where would that lead you? And if you cut one thread, what would happen to the cloth then? Would it fray until it fell apart? Or would it just change pattern?" he paused thoughtfully. "Wielders like you can see those possibilities. You can follow the threads and see where they begin and end, where and how they connect with everything else and what might happen if something changes along the way. — D.M. Enslin

They do the essential work of literary art: they make us more human than we were before. (from the Introduction to Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed) — Steve Almond

The prospect of an early death sits differently upon each person. In some it gifts maturity far outweighing their age and experience: calm acceptance blossoms into a beautiful nature and soft countenance. In others, however, it leads to the formation of a tiny ice flint in their heart. Ice that, though at times concealed, never properly melts.
Rose, though she would have liked to be one of the former, knew herself deep down to be one of the latter. — Kate Morton

To use our individual good or bad luck as a litmus test to determine whether or not God exists constructs an illogical dichotomy that reduces our capacity for true compassion. It implies a pious quid pro quo that defies history, reality, ethics, and reason. It fails to acknowledge that the other half of rising
the very half that makes rising necessary
is having first been nailed to the cross. — Cheryl Strayed

As the High Priestess looked down upon the child, she was struck by her holy perfection. She was a tiny person in miniature, and her beautiful eyes, little hands, and long eyelashes were sublime. — Alan Kinross

I didn't even think, just went with instinct. Opening my arms, I felt the tiny life placed there. Wrapping him close and tight to my chest, I felt my heart swelling with love. So small, so delicate. Using the tip of my finger, I traced his face, his little lips, his chin and cheeks, his eyes. "You're right, Tea, he is beautiful."

"He has your eyes," she whispered. "We still need to name him."

"Christian Simon Doyle. After your dad and your idiot friend."

Her voice sounded raw when she spoke again. "That's perfect."

"You're perfect. Thank you, Tea, thank you for my son, for our life, thank you for not giving up on me. — L.A. Fiore

To us, they are not so much who they are as who they will become. — Cheryl Strayed

Resting beside her, he seemed to Ildiko a living statue, carved from dark granite into a form of supple elegance and power. He was beautiful, and the tremor change in her perception of him robbed her lungs of air.
He opened both eyes suddenly, making her jump. Two shimmering gold coins stared at her unblinking. "Good evening, wife," he said in a voice raspy with the remnants of sleep. A closed-lip smile curved his mouth upward and deepened the tiny lines that fanned from the corners of his eyes. "You're staring. Do I have a fly on my nose?"
Fighting down a blush at being caught gawking at her own husband, Ildiko lightly tapped the tip of his nose with one finger. "I was trying to find a way to kill it without punching you in the face. Lucky for you, it flew away. — Grace Draven

I gaze out, to the stars. I remember the first time I saw real stars, through the hatch window. They were beautiful then, but now, seeing them here, all around me, beautiful feels like an inadequate word. I see the stars as a part of the universe, and having spent my life behind walls, suddenly having none fills me with both awe and terror. Emotion courses through my veins, choking me. I feel so insignificant, a tiny speck surrounded by a million stars.
A million suns.
Centuries away is Sol. Circling around it is Sol-Earth, the planet Amy came from. And one of these other stars is the Centauri binary system, where the new planet spins, waiting for us.
And here we are, in the middle, surrounded by a sea of stars.
Any of them could hold a planet. Any of them could hold a home.
But all of them are out of reach. — Beth Revis

We are wolves, which are wild dogs, and this is our place in the city. We are small and our house is small on our small urban street. We can see the city and the train line and it's beautiful in its own dangerous way. Dangerous because it's shared and taken and fought for.
That's the best way I can put it, and thinking about it, when I walk past the tiny houses on our street, I wonder about the stories inside them. I wonder hard, because houses must have walls and rooftops for a reason. My only query is the windows. Why do they have windows? Is it to let a glimpse of the world in? Or for us to see out? — Markus Zusak

Dusk settled down into this neck of the great valley. Coyotes barked out in the open. From the heights pealed down the mournful blood-curdling, yet beautiful, bay of a wolf. The rosy afterglow of sunset lingered a long time. The place was shut in, closed about by brushy steeps, redolent of sage. A tiny stream of swift water sang faintly down over rocks. And before darkness had time to enfold hollow and slope and horizon, the moon slid up to defeat the encroaching night and blanch the hills with silvery light. — Zane Grey

I am sure that there is no place in the world where your message would not be enhanced by your making the place (whether tiny or large, a hut or a palace) orderly, artistic and beautiful with some form of creativity, some form of 'art' (p. 213). — Edith Schaeffer

I took a deep, overly exaggerated breath, the sort of over-the-top gesture that was filmed for commercials about scented laundry detergent, but in this case was my way of trying to absorb every molecule of my old normal life. I loved the smell of the living room, the kitchen, Jenna's recycling porch, the cupboards, and the basement laundry room. I loved everything, and it seemed to love me back. It was as if my heart had grown to three times its normal size, and it could now hold the specialness of every person who crossed my path; it could track how phenomenal every scent, sound, taste, or texture was. Everything was beautiful, even if it was just the laundry that I'd pulled out of the dryer, still warm, and hugged like a small, lost child. — Dee Williams

The day is crisp and clear, almost like every other morning he's taken the same walk in the snow, hiking to the forest and back. — M.C. Frank

One hot afternoon during the era in which you've gotten yourself ridiculously tangled up with heroin, you will be riding the bus and thinking what a worthless piece of crap you are when a little girl will get on the bus holding the strings of two purple balloons. She'll offer you one of the balloons, but you won't take it because you believe you no longer have a right to such tiny beautiful things. You're wrong. You do. — Cheryl Strayed

Gardening is the greatest tonic and therapy a human being can have. Even if you have only a tiny piece of earth, you can create something beautiful, which we all have a great need for. If we begin by respecting plants, it's inevitable we'll respect people. — Audrey Hepburn

There are no chairs or tables in my tiny room. Vera says that only savages sit down. Only a prone position is beautiful and becoming to the body. She has spread carpets on mattresses along the walls and scattered pillows over them...

("Thirty-Three Abominations") — Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal

I reached out and touched a tiny pink toe that peeked from Kaden's swaddling shirt. "He's beautiful," I said. "How are you feeling?"
"Well enough," she answered, rolling her eyes, "considering I just paraded my lady parts to a killer barbarian." She sighed. "But I suppose, compared to what you've been through, it's a small indignity to bear. — Mary E. Pearson

There is nothing that is not beautiful about bread. The way it grows, from tiny grains, from bowls on the counter, from yeast blooming in a measuring cup like swampy islands. The way it fills a room, a house, a building, with its inimitable smells, submits to a firmly applied fist and contracts, swells again; the way it stretches and expands upon kneading, the warm, supple feel of it against skin. The sight of a warm roll on a table, the taste-sweet, sour, yeasty on the tongue. — Eleanor Brown

I thought of all the nights I'd spent in temperature controlled clubs and restaurants, under artificial lights, drinking artificial cocktails with artificial friends. Artificial problems. Artificial drama. How many real, glorious nights had I missed? Nights like this, when the universe dances for you, and you become a tiny but beautiful note of the magical song it sings. — Leylah Attar

My grief is tremendous but my love is bigger. — Cheryl Strayed

How to describe what humans look like to us! I've tried to describe it a little, when I spoke of Nicki's beauty the night before as a mixture of movement and color. But you can't imagine what it's like for us to look on living flesh. There are those billions of colors and tiny configurations of movement, yes, that make up a living creature on whom we concentrate. But the radiance mingles totally with the carnal scent. Beautiful, that's what any human being is to us, if we stop to consider it, even the old and the diseased, the downtrodden that one doesn't really "see" in the street. They are all like that, like flowers ever in the process of opening, butterflies ever unfolding out of the cocoon. Well, — Anne Rice

I wondered what my father had looked like that day, how he had felt, marrying the lively and beautiful girl who was my mother. I wondered what his life was like now. Did he ever think of us? I wanted to hate him, but I couldn't; I didn't know him well enough. Instead, I wondered about him occasionally, with a confused kind of longing. There was a place inside me carved out for him; I didn't want it to be there, but it was. Once, at the hardware store, Brooks had shown me how to use a drill. I'd made a tiny hole that went deep. The place for my father was like that. — Elizabeth Berg

You've got these big studio films and these tiny independent films now. It's very much either/or. With the independent films, it's always a beautiful risk - it might never be seen. With the studio films, you're conforming to the formula of what's always been in place. — Imogen Poots

A strange cold fear gripped him as he looked down at that angelic face resting against his shoulder. Her thick dark lashes lay heavy against her perfect olive skin like two perfect dark crescent moons concealing those glorious starry green eyes burdened with anguish much too raw and intense for a teenager to bear. She was frail and tiny and much too beautiful, light as a feather in his arms, like a pure white dove. Things were only going to get worse before they were going to get better but that was okay because Logan was determined to be there for Sienna every step of the way. — Ali Harper

I think London is made up of tiny little pockets and villages, and lots of little sub-cultures. So, especially for an actor, it's a brilliant place to live because you've got inspiration all the time, wherever you are. You can turn a corner and you'll be in mansion houses with beautiful gardens and Ferraris, and you'll turn back on yourself and it'll be ghetto land. But I think that's brilliant. — Scarlett Alice Johnson

It seemed to me that this was the real reason people wanted to fuck so much. To get here. To get to this tiny, quiet place where there was nothing else to do but be with each other. Just to be two humans who had - for a short while - stopped wanting. This is the beautiful, final destination. The end of things. — Caitlin Moran

What if you allowed your God to exist in he simple words of compassion others offer you? ... What if the greatest beauty of the day is the shaft of sunlight through our window? What if the worst thing happened and you rose anyway? What if you trusted in the human scale? What if you listened harder to the story of the man on the cross who found a way to endure his suffering more than to the one about the impossible magic of the Messiah? Would you see the miracle in that? — Cheryl Strayed

I wrapped my arms around me as tightly as I could, and stared up at the stars. Had I not been so cold and wanting to escape so badly, I could have stared at them forever: They were amazingly beautiful, so dense and bright. My eyes could get lost up there if I left them looking long enough. [ ... ] They swallowed me up. They were like a hundred thousand tiny candles, sending out hope. — Lucy Christopher

If you move to the West Coast, I will make a gun out of this," she said, drunkenly brandishing a tiny straw before searching the rest of the cluttered table, "and these peanuts and this glass and shoot you in the dick, Will."
I winced at the visual. "Wow-" I began.
"In the dick, Will. — Christina Lauren

He has one hand over her mound and works his fingers as if he was playing guitar, making beautiful music with her tiny button. He serenades her with a love song that only his fingers know how to pick- a tune that no man can duplicate. — Jane Emery

First the shirt. His chest was so sculpted and beautiful. I could see all the tiny lines chiseled into his abdomen. If he looked this good in the window reflection, I couldn't even imagine how insanely gorgeous he was going to be when I looked directly at him. Next — Vi Keeland

Of course you want someone special to love you. A majority of the people who write to me inquire about how they can get the same thing ... Unique as every letter is, the point each writer reaches is the same: I want love and I'm afraid I'll never get it.
It's hard to answer those letters because I'm an advice columnist, not a fortune-teller. I have words instead of a crystal ball. I can't say when you'll get love or how you'll find it or even promise that you will. I can only say you are worthy of it and that it's never too much to ask for it. — Cheryl Strayed

The kindest and most meaningful thing anyone ever said to me is: Your mother would be proud of you ... The strange and painful truth is that I'm a better person because I lost my mom young. When you say you excperienced my writing as sacred, what you are touching is the divine place within me that is my mother. Sugar is the temple I build in my obliterated place. I'd give it all back in a snap, but the fact is, my grief taught me things ... It required me to suffer. It compelled me to reach. — Cheryl Strayed

We should, to begin with, think that God leads a very interesting life, and that he is full of joy. Undoubtedly he is the most joyous being in the universe. The abundance of his love and generosity is inseparable from his infinite joy. All of the good and beautiful things from which we occasionally drink tiny droplets of soul-exhilarating joy, God continuously experiences in all their breadth and depth and richness. — Dallas Willard

I've made it my business to observe fathers and daughters. And I've seen some incredible, beautiful things. Like the little girl who's not very cute - her teeth are funny, and her hair doesn't grow right, and she's got on thick glasses - but her father holds her hand and walks with her like she's a tiny angel that no one can touch. He gives her the best gift a woman can get in this world: protection. And the little girl learns to trust the man in her life. And all the things that the world expects from women - to be beautiful, to soothe the troubled spirit, heal the sick, care for the dying, send the greeting card, bake the cake - allof those things become the way we pay the father back for protecting us ... — Adriana Trigiani

Look at the animals roaming the forest: God's spirit dwells within them. Look at the birds flying across the sky: God's spirit dwells within them. Look at the tiny insects crawling in the grass: God's spirit dwells within them. Look at the fish in the river and sea ... .There is no creature on earth in whom God is absent ... his breath had brought every creature to life ... God's spirit is present within plant as well. The presence of God's spirit in all living things is what makes them beautiful; and if we look with God's eyes, nothing on earth is ugly. — Pelagius

Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can't cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It's just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal. — Cheryl Strayed

I'm encouraging these women, like Cheryl Strayed, to take the jump to writing for the screen. She is adapting her book Tiny Beautiful Things for us. They're infinitely capable of tackling the format. — Reese Witherspoon

I don't believe that God's up in heaven making things go terribly wrong in our lives so that we learn better manners and better coping skills. But I do believe in something like composting for the soul: that if you can find life out of death, if you can use the smashed up garbage to bring about something new and good, however tiny, that's one of the most beautiful things there is. — Shauna Niequist

Their meal was illuminated by torches, which Gwen found were utterly without fire. What the children called torches were really just small platforms on tall, wooden poles. The reason they radiated light was because fairies had flown up to them to waltz and glow on the tiny dance floors. — Audrey Greathouse

Everything seems beautiful because you don't understand. Those flying fish, they're not leaping for joy, they're jumping in terror. Bigger fish want to eat them. That luminous water, it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies, the glitter of putrescence. There's no beauty here, only death and decay. — Curt Siodmak

Have you ever looked at the bud of a magnolia flower? It's a tight little pod that stays closed up for a long time on the end of its branch until one day, out of nowhere, it finally bursts open into this gigantic, gorgeous, fragrant flower that's ten times bigger than the bud itself. It's impossible to imagine that such a big beautiful thing could pop out of that tiny little bud. But it does. — Joanna Gaines

She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, a tiny, bloody angel in the snow, and they were going to destroy her. — Maggie Stiefvater

It was a cruel world though. More than half of all children died before they could reach maturity, thanks to chronic epidemics and malnutrition. People dropped like flies from polio and tuberculosis and smallpox and measles. There probably weren't many people who lived past forty. Women bore so many children, they became toothless old hags by the time they were in their thirties. People often had to resort to violence to survive. Tiny children were forced to do such heavy labor that their bones became deformed, and little girls were forced to become prostitutes on a daily basis. Little boys too, I suspect. Most people led minimal lives in worlds that had nothing to do with richness of perception or spirit. City streets were full of cripples and beggars and criminals. Only a small fraction of the population could gaze at the moon with deep feeling or enjoy a Shakespeare play or listen to the beautiful music of Dowland. — Haruki Murakami

Have you ever thought for once that when you look in the mirror you are hyper aware of your flaws? When the rest of us may see something different. Like a teenager with a pimple. She doesn't focus on her beautiful eyes and cute lips, she zeros in on the one tiny flaw and goes nuts over it." He put his hands behind his head and looked at the ceiling. "You need to stop obsessing over your scars. It's only a quarter of your face and I can't tell you the last time I noticed. — Marilyn Grey

The beauty of Mars exists in the human mind," he said in that dry factual tone, and everyone stared at him amazed. "Without the human presence it is just a collection of atoms, no different than any other random speck of matter in the universe. It's we who understand it, and we who give it meaning. All our centuries of looking up at the night sky and watching it wander through the stars. All those nights of watching it through the telescopes, looking at a tiny disk trying to see canals in the albedo changes. All those dumb sci-fi novels with their monsters and maidens and dying civilizations. And all the scientists who studied the data, or got us here. That's what makes Mars beautiful. Not the basalt and the oxides — Kim Stanley Robinson

Valentine
my friends stitched it up with golden thread
like a red
satin pillow they gave me other whole ones too
roses and charms and red candles
milagros to repair the real one
they told me i was no longer allowed to give it away
a pretty pin cushion
a piece of mexican folk art
a hundred beating poems left unanswered
like a thing to wear around the neck
they said you must heal we will protect you
but i sat weeping at the computer forging ahead anyway
with the small stitched thing struggling in my chest
it knew that it had needed to be torn
so that it could recognize and receive the hundred kindnesses
traveling across three thousand miles at the speed of light
a storm of petals and beautiful words and tiny hearts to keep it
company — Francesca Lia Block

Kept dreaming of this spot she had on her neck, this tiny country. I wanted to visit, to paint a picture of what I found there, a wall with a road map of her skin. — Cath Crowley

One of my favorite stores in the Old Town is Buchbinderei. It's this tiny stationery shop where the owner, Doris Feldman, makes these beautiful hand-bound notebooks I always buy for gifts. — Daniel Humm

Nature is impersonal, awe-inspiring, elegant, eternal. It's geometrically perfect. It's tiny and gigantic. You can travel far to be in a beautiful natural setting, or you can observe it in your backyard - or, in my case, in the trees lining New York City sidewalks, or in the clouds above skyscrapers. — Gretchen Rubin

She will toss the leaves in a wooden bowl with a micro spray of olive oil, a drop of balsamic vinegar, the insanely expensive balsamic vinegar that she bought at the gourmet store, so viscous it drips in a slow, thick stream. A tomato. A Persian cucumber. These will emerge, pristine, from her tiny refrigerator, chilled, perfect. She will slice them thinly and fan them into beautiful patterns, a vegetable mandala, courtesy of the mandoline, a feast for the eyes. She will hand-crumple Parmigiano Reggiano onto the top, and then, from on high, she will brandish the mill and grind coarse crystals of pink salt form the Himalayas into fine, sparkly shavings that will float, like snowflakes, onto the pale green surface of her salad. — Janice Y.K. Lee

When faith did come, it came, I think, by way of my little paralyzed daughter. Her lifeless hands led me; I think her tiny feet still know beautiful paths. — Joyce Kilmer

I listened to the crashing thundering of a tiny tear tumbling like a wave down her beautiful face. — Craig Stone

Anybody can shrug and say life is just some accident of mud and lightning. But Henry, it isn't. And I mean to show you, in the time we have together
whether it's an hour or a day of whatever it is
I mean to show you that you just have to open your heart and look
you hear me, look
and you'll see every minute a hundred reasons to believe."
"Oh, will you?" Henry said, irritated by Diamanda's tone. "And where will I find these hundred reasons?"
"Everywhere!" Diamanda said. "Don't you see we're born into a pattern so huge and so beautiful and so full of meaning we can only hope to understand a tiny part of it in the seventy or eighty years we live with breath in our bodies? But one day, it will all come clear. — Clive Barker

A big tree seemed even more beautiful to me when I imagined thousands of tiny photosynthesis machines inside every leaf. So I went to MIT and worked on bacteria because that's where people knew the most about these switches, how to control the genetics. — Cynthia Kenyon

We would see that each minute counts for something timeless and, if we want, we all can find our way inside these big, tiny moments." Beautiful! — Dee Williams

A dear friend of my early childhood has worked as an anthropologist in Papua New Guinea for much of her life, and from the tiny island where her main work has been focused, she has brought me many funny and beautiful stories over the years. — Michael Leunig

That's why I had a reduction when I was twenty-one," which is when his expression morphed into one of horror.
You'd have thought I told him I made an amazing stew from tiny babies and puppy tongues.
"Why on earth would you do that? That's like God giving you a beautiful gift and you kicking him in the nuts."
I laughed. "God? I thought you were agnostic, Professor."
"I am. But if I could motorboat perfect tits like yours I might be able to find Jesus."
I felt my blush warm my cheeks. "Because Jesus totally lives in my cleavage?"
"Not anymore he doesn't. Your boobs are now too small for him to be comfortable in there." He shook his head, and I couldn't stop laughing. "So selfish, Ziggs, — Christina Lauren

There is a level of consciousness between sleeping and fully wakening when the worries of the day have not settled upon us; the body is stilled, and the senses wholly receptive. If the sun is bright, there is pure silence, or the birds are beginning to sing, this shining level of consciousness can come to be the nearest we will get to paradise this side of our quietus, Every day should begin so, This is no dream. This is the reality. The world outside is beautiful. We do our best to hide it. We cover it. We push it father back. The ugliness we make ourselves. We originate our own worries. We put on our own shackles; build our prisons. We can only glimpse the golden reality, briefly, through our tiny barred windows. — John Wyatt

Writers can take offense when someone asks what's real or autobiographical in our work because, to us, that's not what counts. The bits taken from life are tiny scales on the dragon's tail - what about that whole beautiful writhing, fire-breathing dragon? — Michelle Huneven

When John took those naked pictures, the most popular singer was a girl with a tiny stick body and a large deferential head, who sang in a delicious lilt of white lace and promises and longing to be close. When she shut herself up in her closet and starved herself to death, people were shocked. But starvation was in her voice all along. That was the poignancy of it. A sweet voice locked in a dark place, but focused entirely on the tiny strip of light coming under the door.
I drop the rag in the bucket and smoke some more, ashing into the sink,. A tiny piece of the movie from the naked time plays on my eyeball: A psychotic killer is blowing up amusement parks. At the head of the crowd clamoring to ride the roller coaster is a slim, lovely man with long blond hair and floppy clothes and big, beautiful eyes fixed on a tiny strip of light that only he can see. — Mary Gaitskill

We are all entitled to our opinions and religious beliefs, but we are not entitled to make shit up and then use the shit we made up to oppress other people. — Cheryl Strayed

The tiny body was slippery, and he held her tightly, afraid she'd slither out of his grip. He rotated the infant face-up, holding her about ten inches away from his face. The top of her head had a slight cone shape. Her blue-tinged hands pinked. The baby's eyes were open, alert and seemingly amazed.
They connected with his.
A jolt of intense feeling, of recognition, flowed between them. As he gazed on the scrunched features of the infant, love surged through him. He'd never felt such a feeling before, and his chest ached with the joyful pressure. Caleb wanted to curl her to his chest and keep her safe. He pressed a kiss to her forehead, inhaling a scent that surprised him with its sweetness.
"My baby?" Maggie asked.
The infant broke eye contact with Caleb and turned her face toward the sound of her mother's voice. He blinked back moisture from his eyes and grinned. "You have a beautiful daughter. — Debra Holland

Spread over what must have been at least a hectare or two was the most beautiful garden he had ever seen.
There was an entire miniature forest of cedar, cypress, and other sweet-smelling pines that couldn't normally live in the hot and dry Agrabah. There were formal rows of roses and other delicately petaled flowers. There was a garden just of mountain plants. There was a pool filled with flowering white lilies and their pads, and pink lotuses taller than most men. There was a fountain as big as a house and shaped like an egg. There was a delicate white aviary that looked like a giant's birdcage. Strangely, there were no birds in it.
And everywhere, entwined around every tiny building and every balustrade and every topiary ball, was jasmine. White jasmine, pink jasmine, yellow jasmine, night-flowering jasmine... the smell was heady enough to make Aladdin feel a little drunk.
Jasmine.
This was her garden. — Liz Braswell

Smiling now, Michael Dawn sat on his rooftop, gazing at the stars above him, just like men had done for thousands of years. Out there lay secrets and mysteries that an eternity could never unravel, worlds he could only imagine. Yet looking at them then, it all seemed so surreal. As if the only purpose the stars had in this world was to shine their tiny points of light down on him that evening. To give him something beautiful and breathtaking to admire. Maybe that was their only purpose. Maybe trying to get more out of them, trying to travel among them and shed light on things that were better left unexposed, had been the trouble all along. — John A. Ashley

The mind will say this forever. But I mostly fish rivers these dayas. In so doing, movement becomes stasis, flux is the constant, and everything flows around, through, and beyond me, escaping ungrasped, unnamed, and unscathed. The river's clean escape does not prevent belief in its reality. On the contrary, there is nothing I love more than the feel of a wholeness sliding toward, around, and past me while I stand like an idiot savant in its midst, focusing on tiny, idiot-savantic bits of what is so beautiful to me, and so close, yet so wondrously ungraspable. — David James Duncan

I sensed that not only the grand movements of the cosmos, but everything that had happened in my life, was a part of that song. Even the hurts that seemed most senseless, the mistakes I would have done anything to erase - nothing could make those things good, but good could still come out of them all the same, and in the end the oratorio would be no less beautiful for it.
I realized then that even though I was a tiny speck in an infinite cosmos, a blip on the timeline of eternity, I was not without purpose. And as long as I had a part in the music of the spheres, even if it was only a single grace note, I was not worthless. Nor was I alone. — R. J. Anderson

One day a hummingbird flew in
It fluttered against the window til I got it down where I could reach it with an open umbrella
When I had it in my hand it was so small I couldn't believe I had it
but I could feel the intense life
so intense and so tiny
... You were like the humming bird to me ...
And I am rather inclined to feel that you and I know the best part of one another without spending much time together
It is not that I fear the knowing
It is that I am at this moment willing to let you be what you are to me
it is beautiful and pure and very intensely alive. — Georgia O'Keeffe