Sure the world breeds monsters, but kindness grows just as wild.

I tell people not to write too soon about their lives. Writing about yourself too young is loaded with psychological complexities.

I don't think I look like the pope's favorite Catholic - at least not under close scrutiny.

We are in the grip of some big machine grinding us along. The force of it simplifies everything. A weird calm settled over me from inside out. What is about to happen has stood in line to happen. All the roads out of that instant have been closed, one by one.

I'm doomed to act like myself, even when it's inconvenient!

I'm bred for farm work, and for such folk, the only A's you get come from effort. Strife and strain are all the world can offer, and they temper you into something unbreakable because Lord knows they'll try -- without let up -- to break you.

People who didn't live pre-Internet can't grasp how devoid of ideas life in my hometown was. I stopped in the middle of the SAT to memorize a poem, because I thought, This is a great work of art and I'll never see it again.