The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

"I was a child of atheists, but I had an intuition of God. The days seemed created for our worship. There was grass and flowers and clouds. And then there were the words for these things: mare’s tails and a mackerel sky, daylillies and lady’s slippers and lilicas and hyacinth. There were words even for the weeds: goldenrod and ragweed and Queen Anne’s lace. You could feed yourself on the grandeur of the sounds."