Imagine if each of these grew to be a maple. There should be no room in Vineland for us to stand between them. It’s the same with mice or dandelions. Many more seeds and pups are dropped than may pros...
I should like to write my books only for the dear person who lies awake reading in bed until page last, then lets the open book fall gently on her face, to touch her smile or drink her tears.
I see books as windows out of a little life into the great world.Writing fiction is a dance. It's controlled lunacy. Hearing voices in your head — they give people drugs for that.
I hold on to my adopted shore, chanting private vows: wherever I am, let me never forget to distinguish want from need. Let me be a good animal today. Let me dance in the waves of my private tide, the...
I certainly sense a bit of that when urban friends ask me how I can stand living here, so far from everything? (When I hear this question over the phone, I’m usually looking out the window at a forest...
Here, bodily damage is more or less considered to be a by-product of living, not a disgrace.
Geneticists have confirmed that milk-drinking adults are the exception to the norm, identifying a deviant gene on the second chromo-some that causes lactase persistence. (The gene is SNP C/T13910, if...
First, picture the forest. I want you to be its conscience, the eyes in the trees. The trees are columns of slick, brindled bark like muscular animals overgrown beyond all reason. Every space is fille...
Estevan took off his shirt and lay back against the front of the boat, his hands clasped behind his head, exposing his smooth Mayan chest to the sun. And to me. How could he possibly have done this, i...
Emelina and I took each other in. All morning I'd felt the strange disjuncture that comes from reconnecting with your past. There's such a gulf between yourself and who you were then, but people speak...
Don’t you miss it, any of it?'…'I couldn’t say.' She thought about it. 'Not cars or electric lights, not movies. Books I can get if I ask. But walking around in a library, putting my hands on books I...
Dellarobia watched the void of this man where once there had been wonder, and she despaired of her future. In such a short time he had relieved her of a lifetime of illusions, and already she missed t...
Damned thing, self-consciousness, like a pitiful stray dog tagging you down the road—so hard to shake off. So easy to get back.
Cub retreated to the familiar grounds of remorse and insufficiency, the terms of his existence, ratified by marriage.
Cub had puffed up like a rooster when the article came out, taking it in to show the guys at the gravel company. He was impressed with all the celebrity in equal measure, the type of kid who had cut o...
Cooking is the great divide between good eating and bad. The gains are quantifiable. Cooking and eating at home - even with quality ingredients - costs pennies on the dollar compared with meals prepar...
Communism? Most people have no idea what it is. I do not exaggerate. Look around this restaurant, ask any of these fine citizens. 'Excuse me, sir, I've been thinking of an idea, a bunch of working peo...
But I'll tell you a secret. When I want to take God at His word exactly, I take a peep out the window at His creation. Because that, darling, He makes fresh for us everyday without a lot of dubious mi...
Back in Georgia everybody we knew had an automobile. A bu, don't tell stories. That is not possible. Well, not everybody. I don't mean babies and children. But every single family. Not possible. Yes,...
As long as we won't commit to knowing everything, the presumption is we know nothing...he did not claim that God moves in mysterious ways. Instead he seemed to believe, as she did, though they never c...