Where I'm from we don't trust paper. Wealth is what's here on the premises. If I open a cupboard and see, say, thirty cans of tomato sauce and a five-pound bag of rice, I get a little thrill of well-being - much more so than if I take a look at the quarterly dividend report from my mutual fund.

I was afraid you had deceased,' he said. 'Or gotten engrossed in a long book.

You've got work to do. Don't put this off. And don't take the long view, here. You know? Life is today and tomorrow and - and if you're lucky, next week.

Sport is a seductive metaphor (life as a game in which we gain victory through hard work, discipline, and visualizing success). but the older metaphor of farming (life as hard labor that is subject to weather and quirks of blind fate and may return no reward whatsoever and don't be surprised) is still in our blood.

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.

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

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