Only sometimes when we pick and choose among the rules we discover later that we have set aside something precious in the process.

My neighbor Alice Pierce is fond of singing folk music to her garden plants. Thinks it makes them grow or something. The Major had often wondered how a wailing rendition of 'Greensleeves' would encourage greater raspberry production but Alice insisted that it worked far better than chemical fertilizers, and she did produce several kinds of fruit in pie-worthy quantitites. No sense of pitch, but plenty of enthusiasm, he added.

Life does often get in the way of one's reading.

Passion is all very well, but it wouldn't do to spill the tea.

I later realized that this is my view of passion: It is rooted in genuine friendship. Chemistry may be two strangers exchanging smoldering looks—but passion has to be able to survive at least a twenty-minute conversation!

We are all small-minded people, creeping about the earth grubbing for our own advantage and making the very mistakes for which we want to humiliate our neighbors.

Only sometimes when we pick and choose among the rules we discover later that we have set aside something precious in the process.