It's kind of alarming for me to realize that, when I'm writing stories about times I remember, it's already historical fiction.

Under the pavement the dirt is dreaming of grass.

There are moments when the heart is generous, and then it knows that for better or worse our lives are woven together here, one with one another and with the place and all the living things.

To defend what we love we need a particularizing language, for we love what we particularly know.

It's kind of alarming for me to realize that, when I'm writing stories about times I remember, it's already historical fiction.

Again I resume the long lesson: how small a thing can be pleasing, how little in this hard world it takes to satisfy the mind and bring it to its rest.

The sense of it may come with watching a flock of cedar waxwings eating wild grapes in the top of the woods on a November afternoon. Everything they do is leisurely. They pick the grapes with a curious deliberation, comb their feathers, converse in high windy whistles. Now and then one will fly out and back in a sort of dancing flight full of whimsical flutters and turns. They are like farmers loafing in their own fields on Sunday. Though they have no Sundays, their days are full of sabbaths.