There are obviously a great many ways to organize some fraction of the material in a life.

Troubles cured you salty as a country ham, smoky to the taste, thick-skinned and tender inside.

All women are misfits. We do not fit into this world without amputations.

One trouble: to be a professional anything in the United States is to think of oneself as an expert and one's ideas as semisacred, and to treat others in a certain way - professionally.

Nobody can live on a bridge or plant potatoes but it is fine for comings and goings, meetings, partings and long views and a real connection to someplace else where you may in the crazy weathers of struggle how and again want to be.

You are built to pull a cart, to lift a heavy load and bear it, to haul up the long slope, and so am I, peasant bodies, earthy, solid shapely dark glazed clay pots that can stand on the fire.

Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third.