If you live in the same small place long enough, something you don't like is bound to happen

In order to go on with our lives, we are always capable of making the ominous into the merely strange.

In a very basic way, a prominent landmark such as Mt. Holyoke tells you where you are. They let you know that you're not the first person in a place

Writing is revision. All prose responds to work.

God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he's not the one who's supposed to divvy up the loot. That charge was laid upon us

Many people find it easy to imagine unseen webs of malevolent conspiracy in the world, and they are not always wrong. But there is also an innocence that conspires to hold humanity together, and it is made of people who can never fully know the good that they have done.

...Attempts at imitation would put the emphasis where it didn't belong. The goal was to improve the lives of others, not oneself.