The only thing that keeps a man going is energy. And what is energy but liking life?
There is a charm, even for homely things, in perfect maintenance.
A man can spend his whole existence never learning the simple lesson that he has only one life and that if he fails to do what he wants with it, nobody else really cares.
Only little boys and old men sneer at love.
Novels must have verisimilitude, and truth has little enough of that.
Frederick Buechner can find grace and redemption even in the shoddiest, phoniest aspects of a cultural wasteland. One reads Lion Country...with hope and delight.