Just the knowledge that a good book is waiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.

I wonder if children don't begin to reject both poetry and religion for similar reasons, because the way both are taught takes the life out of them.

When I was a child, it was a matter of pride that I could plow through a Nancy Drew story in one afternoon, and begin another in the evening. . . . I was probably trying to impress the librarians who kept me supplied with books.

The Christian religion asks us to put our trust not in ideas, and certainly not in ideologies, but in a God Who was vulnerable enough to become human and die, and Who desires to be present to us in our ordinary circumstances.

To be an American is to move on, as if we could outrun change. To attach oneself to place is to surrender to it, and suffer with it.

Laundry, liturgy and women's work all serve to ground us in the world, and they need not grind us down. Our daily tasks, whether we perceive them as drudgery or essential, life-supporting work, do not define who we are as women or as human beings.

Traversing a slow page, to come upon a lode of the pure shining metal is to exult inwardly for greedy hours.