The great fact in life, the always possible escape from dullness, was the lake. The sun rose out of it, the day began there; it was like an open door that nobody could shut. The land and all its dreariness could never close in on you. You had only to look at the lake, and you knew you would soon be free.

Hunger is a powerful incentive to introspection.

No nation has ever produced great art that has not made a high art of cookery, because art appeals primarily to the senses.

The test of one's decency is how much of a fight one can put up after one has stopped caring, and after one has found out that one can never please the people they wanted to please.

The more observing ones may have seen, but discerning people are usually discreet and often kind, for we usually bleed a little before we begin to discern.

Life was so short that it meant nothing at all unless it were continually reinforced by something that endured; unless the shadows of individual existence came and went against a background that held together.

Some things are best learned in calm, others in storm.