Animals are stylized characters in a kind of old saga - stylized because even the most acute of them have little leeway as they play out their parts.

City people try to buy time as a rule, when they can, whereas country people are prepared to kill time, although both try to cherish in their mind's eye the notion of a better life ahead.

There were periods during my childhood when I stammered so badly I couldn't talk at all.

There aren't many irritations to match the condescension which a woman metes out to a man who she believes has loved her vainly for the past umpteen years.

Indeed, if "biology is chemistry with history," as somebody has said, then nature writing is biology with love.

Men greet each other with a sock on the arm, women with a hug, and the hug wears better in the long run.

Poetry is engendered in solitude, so what better meter for it than the clip of a buckskin horse?