If the Lord hasn't got a boyfriend lined up for me to marry, that's his business.

Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.

When we traded homemaking for careers, we were implicitly promised economic independence and worldly influence. But a devil of a bargain it has turned out to be in terms of daily life. We gave up the aroma of warm bread rising, the measured pace of nurturing routines, the creative task of molding our families' tastes and zest for life; we received in exchange the minivan and the Lunchable.

I live in a rural part of Virginia surrounded by farms and farmers.

Over the last decade our country has lost an average of 300 farms a week. Large or small, each of those was the lifes work of a real person or family, people who built their lives around a promise and watched it break.

I don't *ever* write about real people. Art is supposed to be better than that. If you want a slice of life, look out the window.

Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.