Sometimes just being still is the best thing you can do for yourself.

Maybe all the secrets of life were written on the surface of leaves, waiting to be translated. If I touched them long enough, I might be given some information no one else had.

Since that night I have come to understand that sometimes the best families of all are those we create ourselves, the people we choose to be with.

Sometimes just being still is the best thing you can do for yourself.

I always tell my writing students that every good piece of writing begins with both a mystery and a love story. And that every single sentence must be a poem. And that economy is the key to all good writing. And that every character has to have a secret.

Because they [Americans] want to be thought of as a rich nation, they are very ashamed of this place [Appalachia] that has come to represent poverty, even though poverty exists all over the country, and exists as much in urban areas as it does in rural, if not more.

I had always found comfort in the leaves, in their silence. They were like a parchment that holds words of wisdom. Simply holding them in my hand gave me some of the peace a tree possesses. To be like that-to just be-that's the most noble thing of all.