There's a graveyard in northern France where all the dead boys from D-Day are buried. The white crosses reach from one horizon to the other. I remember looking it over and thinking it was a forest of graves. But the rows were like this, dizzying, diagonal, perfectly straight, so after all it wasn't a forest but an orchard of graves. Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature.

I personally am inclined to approach [housework] the way governments treat dissent: ignore it until it revolts.

Be still, and the world is bound to turn herself inside out to entertain you. Everywhere you look, joyful noise is clanging to drown out quiet desperation.

This story about good food begins in a quick-stop convenience market.

... 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.

God doesn’t need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves.

If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread.