We felt tired to our bones but anointed by life in a durable, companionable way, for at least the present moment. We the living take every step in tandem with death, whether we can see that or not. W...
We cater to the better class of gentile clientele. We reserve the right to decline service to anyone we deem to be incompatible.
We cannot jump to conclusions. All we can do is measure and count. That is the task of science.
Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work--that goes on, and it adds up. It goes into the ground, into crops, into children's bellies and their bright...
Wake up now, look alive, for here is a day off work just to praise Creation: the turkey, the squash, and the corn, these things that ate and drank sunshine, grass, mud, and rain, and then in the short...
Two dots an inch apart, as small and tidy as punctuation marks at the end of a sentence none of us could read. The sentence would have started somewhere just above her heart.
Twenty pounds of tomatoes will cook down into a pot of tomato sauce that fits into five one-quart freezer boxes, good for one family meal each. (Be warned, the fragrance of your kitchen will cause inn...
Tomorrow these villagers would carry their secret icons into the church without any priest and light the candles themselves, moving together in single-minded grace. Like the school of the fish, so dri...
To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know.
This household is like a pocketful of coins that jingled together for a time, but now have been slapped on a counter to pay a price. The pocket empties out, the coins venture back into the infinite ci...
This came as a strange letdown, to see how the game always went to those who knew the rules without understanding the lesson.
They say you thatched your roof and now you must not run out of your house if it rains.
They count that as your birthday -- the day your mother gets up.Not the day you were born?Not the day you came out. They count the mother getting better as all part of the birth.
They are all for the great captain, while he indentures them and eats their souls and property. Somehow he gets them to side against their own.
They all attended Hester's church, which Dellarobia viewed as a complicated pyramid scheme of moral debt and credit resting ultimately on the shoulders of the Lord, but rife with middle managers.
There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, 'There now, hang on, you'll get over it.' Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes....
Then again, do you have to be told every single thing about the world before you know it?
The way he talked sounded part Yankee, part foreign, like one of those friendly Irish policeman in the old movies: Ouch, mind you!
The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.
The pale-skinned boy stood shivering in water up to his waist, thinking these were the most awful words in any language: You will be surprised. The moment when everything is about to change.