Pure and unblemished souls must taste very bland, with an aftertaste of bitterness.

Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature.

Even feigning surprise, pretending it was unexpected and saying a ritual thanks, is surely wiser than just expecting everything so carelessly.

restraint equals indulgence

Shoes would interfere with her conversation, for she constantly addresses the ground under her feet. Asking forgiveness. Owning, disowning, recanting, recharting a hateful course of events to make sense of her complicity. We all are, I suppose. Trying to invent our version of the story. All human odes are essentially one, "My life; what I stole from history, and how I live with it.

I look at my four boys, who are the colors of silt, loam, dust, and clay, an infinite palette for children of their own, and I understand that time erases whiteness altogether.

A woman knows she can walk away from a pot to tend something else and the pot will go on boiling; if she couldn't this world would end at once.