If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life.

... Urban friends ask me how I can stand living here, 'so far from everything?' When I hear this question over the phone, I'm usually looking out the window at a forest, a running creek, and a vegetable garden, thinking: Define everything.

He was getting that look he gets, oh boy, like Here comes Moses tromping down off of Mount Syanide with ten fresh ways to wreck your life.

There were two things about Mama. One is she always expected the best out of me. And the other is that then no matter what I did, whatever I came home with, she acted like it was the moon I had just hung up in the sky and plugged in all the stars. Like I was that good.

I've never gotten over high school, to the extent that I'm still a little surprised that my friends want to hang out with me.

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.

For Lou Ann, life itself was a life-threatening enterprise.