Poets and songwriters speak highly of spring as one of the great joys of life in the temperate zone, but in the real world most of spring is disappointing. We looked forward to it too long, and the spring we had in mind in February was warmer and dryer than the actual spring when it finally arrives. We'd expected it to be a whole season, like winter, instead of a handful of separate moments and single afternoons.

The nostalgic notion of the family orchards is lovely - all that wholesome fruit for our forebears to sit on the back steps biting into - but basically we were growing it to drink.

However long you have a cat and however plainly he lays his life open before you, there is always something hidden, some name he goes by in a place you never heard of.

a woman may be called a wife and mother for most of her life, while a man is called a husband and father only at his funeral.

Very few people have no opinions about cats.

Our Revolution was born and raised in taverns.

In the taverns all was amiable and easy, but the coffeehouses were cauldrons of edgy malcontents.