It is books that are a key to the wide world; if you can't do anything else, read all that you can.

Life on earth, filled with uncertainty and change, seemed far more difficult than what lay beyond the grave.

This was life, I supposed, running and running and running, and realizing along the way that the phantom was getting closer.

It was impossible not to admire him, not to want to do something to contain that kind of beauty- drink him, ingest him, sneak into his shirt and hide for the rest of one's natural life.

It is a rule of nature that taking a day off on the farm sets a person back at least a week.

I had forgotten what it was like, to be drawn to a person...I'd forgotten how your blood flows toward a person when they move, so that all at once you know what the pull of gravity feels like. and you know that this is something strong and important, something that you need for life, this woman moving through the room.

There were so many miracles at work: that a blossom might become a peach, that a bee could make honey in its thorax, that rain might someday fall. I thought then about the seasons changing, and in the gray of night I could almost will myself to see the azure sky, the gold of the maple leaves, the crimson of the ripe apples, the hoarfrost on the grass.