No life goes past so swiftly as an eventless one, no clock spins like a clock whose days are all alike.

History is not the proper midden for digging up novelties. Perhaps that is one reason why a nation bent on novelty ignores it.

Homesickness is a great teacher. It taught me, during an endless rainy fall, that I came from the arid lands, and like where I came from. I was used to dry clarity and sharpness in the air. I was used to horizons that either lifted into jagged ranges or rimmed the geometrical circle of the flat world. I was used to seeing a long way. I was used to earth colors--tan, rusty red, toned white--and the endless green of Iowa offended me. I was used to a sun that came up over mountains and went down behind other mountains. I missed the color and smell of sagebrush, and the sight of bare ground.

Towns are like people. Old ones often have character, the new ones are interchangeable.

Wisdom. . .is knowing what you have to accept.

[T]hat old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air ... Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year's mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.

There is nothing like a doorbell to precipitate the potential into the kinetic.