JOE COULDN’T STAND the noise. The giant room they
I’ve experienced having you in the house. It’s like living with a loud motor running all the time. Up, down, into this room and that room, eating supper, jumping from the table, cursing all the time,...
However much these acres looked like a gift of nature, or of God, they were not. We went to church to pay our respects, not to give thanks.
How could she pursue the transcendence and virtue of the intellectual life when her mind had disappeared into her body like a sponge into a basin of ink? Which did not mean,
Hmmph, said Mrs. Walker, or rather, without speaking, she launched this hmmph into the air of the room and allowed it to float there.
Hmm, What did I love? I think all the scents. Mama's lilac trees, and the wild iris in the fields, and rain on the breeze on a hot day. Apple and pear blossoms. The hay just cut. The mix of odors in t...
And of course there was no help for it, except recalling bits of conversations she had overheard from time to time about marriage. That’s what knitting groups and sewing groups were for, wasn’t it? Co...
A child who is protected from all controversial ideas is as vulnerable as a child who is protected from every germ. The infection, when it comes- and it will come- may overwhelm the system, be it the...
What it feels like to resist without seeming to resist, to absent yourself while seeming respectful and attentive.
Surprised. Then everyone, by unspoken
Like a man who has jumped off a diving board, but then, through force of will, lowers himself inch by inch into the pool.
Cats swore that they had pretended to be domesticated to protect themselves—any cat who lived with a human did so under duress, and all cats escaped whenever they could.
What? he would say, practically snapping to attention. What I had thought to be of passing interest would now take on profound fascination as I read it aloud, and Pat would inhale it. A few hours or a...
Well, being a perfectionist seems okay from the outside, but a perfectionist never enjoys anything, no matter how well it goes, because nothing is ever perfect.
There were so many things Rosanna could have been besides a farm wife, she thought. But it was not a source of regret—it was a source of pride.
She dressed to look good, and I dressed for obscurity.
She could not have created this moment, these lovely faces, these candles flickering, the flash of the silverware, the fragrances of the food hanging over the table, the heads turning this way and tha...
Linda was just born when I had my first miscarriage, and for a while, six months maybe, the sight of those two babies, whom I had loved and cared for with real interest and satisfaction, affected me l...
It is hard to know whether an air of self-confidence precedes or follows success.
If you lived in the same place long enough, everything reminded you of everything else.