..people (in Minnesota) avoid stupidity when possible, not wanting to be a $10 haircut on a 50 cent head.

Spending time in a church does not make you religious, any more than spending time in a garage makes you a car.

Forget what you learned about poetry in school. (That it's complex, opaque, a problem to be solved in 1500 words by tomorrow.) Poetry is the last preserve of honest speech and the outspoken heart. It holds the cadence of common life. It has a passion for truth and justice and liberty; it is a buoy to people in ordinary trouble: to a friend whose life has gone skidding into the meridian, who has been struck by bad news, who is frying eggs and hash browns and has whiny child clinging to his pant leg.

March is the month God created to show people who don't drink what a hangover is like.

It was luxuries like air conditioning that brought down the Roman Empire. With air conditioning their windows were shut, they couldn't hear the barbarians coming.

A book is a gift you can open again and again.

A man can't eat anger for breakfast and sleep with it at night and not suffer damage to his soul.