Children - even when they have endured the unthinkable - have a gift for divining the moment when the grown-ups really need to lighten up.
But Dovey was one of those people who traveled in a medium-size pod of tardiness on which others came to rely.
And my husband, why, hell hath no fury like a Baptist preacher.
Readers of fiction read, I think, for a deeper embrace of the world, of reality. And that's brave. I never get over being thankful for that - for the courage of my readers.
It's what you do that makes your soul not the other way around.
If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread.
I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.
The useful illusion that everything would be fine. It amazed her now to watch people walking through life with their ludicrous trust.
You talk about her as if she is the Notre Dame Cathedral! She is. And the Statue of Liberty and Abbey Road and the best burrito of your life. Didn't you know?
You can't save the whales by eating whales, but paradoxically, you can help save rare, domesticated foods by eating them. They're kept alive by gardeners who have a taste for them, and farmers who kno...
Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.
Those first few weeks are an unearthly season. From the outside you remain so ordinary, no one can tell from looking that you have experienced an earthquake of the soul. You've been torn asunder, inve...
The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.
The only useful generalization I’d hazard about rural politics is that they tend to break on the line of insider vs. outsider. When my country neighbors sit down with a new social group, the first que...
The larger the corporation, the more distant its motives are apt to be from the original spirit of organic farming—and the farther the products will likely be shipped to buyers who will smile at the h...
Spring is made of solid, fourteen-karat gratitude, the reward for the long wait. Every religious tradition from the northern hemisphere honors some form of April hallelujah, for this is the season of...
Sometimes I prayed for Baby Jesus to make me good, but Baby Jesus didn't.
So you make this deal with the gods. You do these dances and they'll send rain and good crops and the whole works? And nothing bad will ever happen. Right.' Prayer had always struck me as more or less...
She told him television was a bad influence. Probably she was right. Like those white birds he's been seeing outside the window, it flashes its wings and promises whatever you want, even before you kn...
She kept her ears permanently tuned to the chicken voices outside, so knew immediately when a coyote had crept into the yard, and barreled screaming for the front door before the rest of us had a clue...