treehouse

"But what exactly do these irrational standards

[the standards of the artistic] mean?
They mean the supremacy of the detail over the general
, ofthe part that is more alive than the whole, of the little
thing which a man observes and greets with a friendly
nod of the spirit while the crowd around him is being
driven by some common impulse to some common goal....
This capacity to wonder at trifles--no matter the immanent
peril--these sides of the spirit, these footnotes in the volume
of life are the highest forms of consciousness, and it is in this
childishly speculative state of mind, so different from
commonsense and its logic, that we know the world
to be good. (Nabokov, Lectures)