But I think everybody should write. I think those people with stories who don't write should be stomped on.

It goes in streaks. But some things never go out of fashion.' Hunger artists, fat folks, giants, and dog acts come and go but real freaks never lose their appeal.

Giving Papa time to think, as Arty put it, was like pumping random rounds into a fireworks factory. The odds favored dramatic results.

I remember, in hot floods, the way he slept, still as death, with his face washed flat, stony as a carved tomb and exquisite. His weakness and his ravening bitter needs were terrible, and beautiful, and irresistible as an earthquake. He scalded or smothered anyone he needed, but his needing and the hurt that it caused me were the most life I have ever had. Remember what a poor thing I have always been and forgive me.

There are parts of Texas where a fly lives ten thousand years and a man can't die soon enough. Time gets strange there from too much sky, too many miles from crack to crease in the flat surface of the land.

Were also far enough from the publishing power that we have no access to the politics of publishing, although there are interpersonal politics, of course.

Just as a snowflakewent on to feed a puddle that filled a stream and then the river, thepumpkin patch is a gathering of molecules from my old goats, chickens,and cats, feeding the underworld of dirt creatures. And somewhere, myfather's ashes mingle with birds, air, and sea.