Beginning a novel is always hard. It feels like going nowhere. I always have to write at least 100 pages that go into the trashcan before it finally begins to work. It's discouraging, but necessary to...
Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.
If you never stepped on anybody's toes, you never been for a walk.
What's with everybody always trying to get rid of the Indians? I said, not really asking for an answer. I thought again of the history-book pictures. Astronomers and brain surgeons. They should have d...
Like kids who only ever get socks for Christmas, but still believe with all their hearts in Santa.
Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain. Almost no one gets a chance to alter the course of human events on purpo...
Sorry to tell you, but that's a very old chestnut. My mother used to say when God slams a door on you, he opens a window.' Tig gave this two seconds of respectful consideration before rejecting it. 'N...
Cars with flames painted on the hood might get more speeding tickets. Are the flames making the car go fast? No. Certain things just go together. And when they do, they are correlated. It is the darli...
As a dinner guest I gratefully eat just about anything that's set before me, because graciousness among friends is dearer to me than any other agenda.
The spiraling flights of moths appear haphazard only because of the mechanisms of olfactory tracking are so different from our own. Using binocular vision, we judge the location of an object by compar...
The giant beech next door intends to shiver off every hair of its pelt.
In my own worst seasons I've come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom windo...
He lifts her breasts, which fit perfectly into his hands, though he knows this is no promise that he gets to keep them. A million things you can't have will fit in a human hand.
He asked me if the alligator was a national symbol of the United States, because you saw them everywhere on people's shirts, just above the heart.
The arrogance of the able-bodied is staggering. Yes, maybe we'd like to be able to get places quickly, and carry things in both hands, but only because we have to keep up with the rest of you. We woul...
We came from Bethlehem, Georgia bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle.
People read books to escape the uncertainties of life.
I know what it is: it's a green mamba snake away up in the tree. You don't have to be afraid of them anymore because you are one. They lie so still on the tree branch; they are the same everything as...
The urge to lie is produced by the contradictions in our lives. We are made to declare love for our country, while it tramples our rights and dignity.
Insomnia’s different, I said. It was hard to explain this to people. You know the light that comes on when you open the refrigerator door? Just imagine it stays on all the time, even after you close t...
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