On the day of the hunt I came to know in the slick center of my bones this one thing: all animals kill to survive, and we are animals.
Mistakes wreck your life. But they make what you have. It's kind of all one. You know what Hester told me when we were working the sheep one time? She said it's no good to complain about your flock, b...
Lies are infinite in number, and the truth so small and singular.
Lately whenever I’d scratched somebody’s surface I’d turned up a ghost story.
Killing is a culturally loaded term, for most of us inextricably tied up with some version of a command that begins, Thou shalt not. Every faith has it. And for all but perhaps the Jainists of India,...
I’ve heard a Buddhist monk suggest the number of food-caused deaths is minimized in steak dinners, which share one death over many meals, whereas the equation is reversed for a bowl of clams.
I’m beginning at least to notice when I’m consuming the United Nations of edible plants and animals all in one seating. (Or the WTO, is more like it.) On a winter’s day not long ago I was served a sum...
It’s funny how people don’t give that much thought to what kids want, as long as they’re being quiet.
It's a selfish habit. I never learn anything from listening to myself.
It is true that I do not speak as well as I can think. But that is true of most people, as nearly as I can tell.
Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.
I was a skeleton with flesh and clothes and thoughts.
I didn’t wish to be comforted. You can’t replace people you love with other people, I said. They’re not like old shoes or something. No. But you can trust that you’re not going to run out of people to...
I considered her my ally, because, like me, she was imperfect.
How had she not seen all this? Willa was the one who raised her anxiety shield against every family medical checkup or late-night ring of the phone, expecting the worst so life couldn’t blindside them...
God is frightful, God is great--you pick. I choose this: God is in the details, the completely unnecessary miracles sometimes tossed up as stars to guide us. They are the promise of good fortune in a...
Forgive me, O Heavenly Father, according to the multitude of Thy mercies. I have lusted in my heart to break a man's skull and scatter the stench of his brains across several people's back yards.
As I looked at her there among the pumpkins I was overcome with the color and the intesity of my life. In these moments we are driven to try and hoard happiness by taking photographs, but I know bette...
Absence of that knowledge has rendered us a nation of wary label-readers, oddly uneasy in our obligate relationship with the things we eat ... Our words for unhealthy contamination--soiled or dirty--s...
A thousand fishes make the school, but they always move together: one great, bright, brittle altogetherness.