...it's closeness that does you in. Never get too close to people, son.

Farmers are patient men. They got to be. Got to see those seeds come up week by week, fraction by fraction, and sweat it out for some days not knowing yet is it weeds or vegetables.

I think I was born with the impression that what happened in books was much more reasonable, and interesting, and real, in some ways, than what happened in life.

We stay in the house so much because I am waiting for the telephone. I seem to be back in my teens, a period I thought I would never have to endure again: my life is spent hoping for things that only someone else can bring about.

Women were the ones that held the reins, it emerged.

Now peculiar scraps of knowledge were stuck to him like lint from all his jobs.

View your burden as a gift. It's the theme that has been given you to work with. Accept that and lean into it.