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I Lost A Child," She Said, Meeting Lusa's Eyes Directly. "i Thought I Wouldn't Live Through It. But You Do. You Learn To Love The Place Somebody Leaves Behind For You.

-Barbara Kingsolver

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I Lost A Child,"

Barbara Kingsolver

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I Lost A Child," She Said, Meeting Lusa's Eyes Directly. "i Thought I Wouldn't Live Through It. But You Do. You Learn To Love The Place Somebody Leaves Behind For You.

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Feeling That Morality Has Nothing To Do With The Way You Use The Resources Of The World Is An Idea That Can't Persist Much Longer. If It Does, Then We Won't.

There Must Be Limits, Somewhere, To The Human Footprint On This Earth. When The Whole Of The World Is Reduced To Nothing But Human Product, We Will Have Lost The Map That Can Show Us How We Got Here, And Can Offer Our Spirits An Answer When We Ask Why. Surely We Are Capable Of Declaring Sacred Some Quarters That We Dare Not Enter Or Possess.

Morning Always Comes.

You Know Things Are Bad When A Woman Without Any Legs And Who Recently Lost Two Of Her Own Kids Feels Sorry For You.

From My Earliest Memory, Times Of Crisis Seemed To End Up With Women In The Kitchen Preparing Food For Men.

The Standard Approach Has Been To Pump Up The Dosage Of Chemicals ... Twenty Percent Of These Approved-for-use Pesticides Are Listed By The Epa As Carcinogenic In Humans.

There Is No Perfect Time To Write. There Is Only Now.

Few People Know So Clearly What They Want. Most People Can't Even Think What To Hope For When They Throw A Penny In A Fountain.

This Forest Eats Itself And Lives Forever.

Does A Man Become A Revolutionary Out Of The Belief He's Entitled To Joy Rather Than Submission?

I Didn't Study Writing In School, I Studied Biology As An Undergraduate And Graduate Student. So I Think That I Write Fiction In The Scientific Way. I Love Invention, Obviously; I Love Creation Of Character. But I Do Feel Very Rooted In The Real World, Even In The Way That I Create Characters.

The First Steps Toward Stewardship Are Awareness, Appreciation, And The Selfish Desire To Have The Things Around For Our Kids To See. Presumably The Unselfish Motives Will Follow As We Wise Up.

I'm Not Pretending To Be Ingenuous; I Know What I'm Doing.

All Of The Promises Of Politicians, Generals, Madmen, And Crusaders That War Can Create Peace Have Yet To Be Borne Out.

I Don't Know What Rituals My Kids Will Carry Into Adulthood, Whether They'll Grow Up Attached To Homemade Pizza On Friday Nights, Or The Scent Of Peppers Roasting Over A Fire, Or What. I Do Know That Flavors Work Their Own Ways Under The Skin, Into The Heart Of Longing. Where My Kids Are Concerned I Find Myself Hoping For The Simplest Things: That If Someday They Crave Orchards Where Their Kids Can Climb Into The Branches And Steal Apples, The World Will Have Trees Enough With Arms To Receive Them.

I Wonder That Religion Can Live Or Die On The Strength Of A Faint, Stirring Breeze. The Scent Trail Shifts, Causing The Predator To Miss The Pounce. One God Draws In The Breath Of Life And Rises; Another God Expires.

Once The Rains Abated, My Father's Garden Thrived In The Heat Like An Unleashed Temper.

Anybody Can Get Worked Up, If They Have The Intention. It's Peacefulness That Is Hard To Come By On Purpose.

Don't Wait For The Muse. She Has A Lousy Work Ethic. Writers Just Write.

There Was A Roaring In My Ears And I Lost Track Of What They Were Saying. I Believe It Was The Physical Manifestation Of Unbearable Grief.

In Exchange For His First Taste Of Powdered Milk, Pascal Showed Me A Tree We Could Climb To Find A Bird's Nest. After We Handled And Examined The Pink-skinned Baby Birds, He Popped One Of Them Into His Mouth Like A Jujube. It Seemed To Please Him A Lot. He Offered A Baby Bird To Me, Pantomiming That I Should Eat It. I Understood Perfectly Well What He Meant, But I Refused. He Did Not Seem Disappointed To Have To Eat The Whole Brood Himself.

The March Of Human Progress Seemed Mainly A Matter Of Getting Over That Initial Shock Of Being Here.

Everything Truly Important Is Washable.

Insomnia’s Different,” I Said. It Was Hard To Explain This To People. “you Know The Light That Comes On When You Open The Refrigerator Door? Just Imagine It Stays On All The Time, Even After You Close The Door. That’s What It’s Like In My Head. The Light Stays On.

I Could Never Work Out Whether We Were To View Religion As A Life-insurance Policy Or A Life Sentence. I Can Understand A Wrathful God Who'd Just As Soon Dangle Us All From A Hook. And I Can Understand A Tender, Unprejudiced Jesus. But I Could Never Quite Feature The Two Of Them Living In The Same House. You Wind Up Walking On Eggshells, Never Knowing Which... Is At Home At The Moment.

If We Can't, As Artists, Improve On Real Life, We Should Put Down Our Pencils And Go Bake Bread.

There Is No Point Treating A Depressed Person As Though She Were Just Feeling Sad, Saying, 'there Now, Hang On, You'll Get Over It.' Sadness Is More Or Less Like A Head Cold- With Patience, It Passes. Depression Is Like Cancer.

Sleeping Alone Seemed Unnatural To Me, And Pitiful, Something Done In Hospitals Or When You're Contagious.

Sometimes I Prayed For Baby Jesus To Make Me Good, But Baby Jesus Didn't.

The Very Least You Can Do In Your Life Is To Figure Out What You Hope For. And The Most You Can Do Is Live Inside That Hope. Not Admire It From A Distance But Live Right In It, Under Its Roof.

Value Is Not Made Of Money, But A Tender Balance Of Expectation And Longing.

When People Are Frightened About Going Hungry And Paying Their Mortgages, A Scarcity Model Begins To Prevail; They Fear Someone Else Will Get Their Piece Of The Pie.

Shoes Would Interfere With Her Conversation, For She Constantly Addresses The Ground Under Her Feet. Asking Forgiveness. Owning, Disowning, Recanting, Recharting A Hateful Course Of Events To Make Sense Of Her Complicity. We All Are, I Suppose. Trying To Invent Our Version Of The Story. All Human Odes Are Essentially One, "my Life; What I Stole From History, And How I Live With It.

Once You Start Cooking, One Thing Leads To Another. A New Recipe Is As Exciting As A Blind Date. A New Ingredient, Heaven Help Me, Is An Intoxicating Affair.

The Older I Get, The More I Appreciate My Rural Childhood. I Spent A Lot Of Time Outdoors, Unsupervised, Which Is A Blessing.

What Keeps Me Awake At The Wheel Is The Thrill Of Trying Something Completely New With Each Book. I’m Not A Risk-taker In Life, Generally Speaking, But As A Writer I Definitely Choose The Fast Car, The Impossible Rock Face, The Free Fall.

Sometimes The Strength Of Motherhood Is Greater Than Natural Laws.

I Grew Up Aware Of All The People I Depended On And Who Depended On Me.

God Is Frightful, God Is Great--you Pick. I Choose This: God Is In The Details, The Completely Unnecessary Miracles Sometimes Tossed Up As Stars To Guide Us. They Are The Promise Of Good Fortune In A Cloudless Day, And The Animals In The Clouds; Look Hard Enough, And You'll See Them. Don't Ask If They're Real.

Humans Can Be Fairly Ridiculous Animals.

High Fashion Has The Shelf Life Of Potato Salad. And When Past Its Prime, It Is Similarly Deadly.

The Truth Needs So Little Rehearsal.

We Aimed For No More Than To Have Dominion Over Every Creature That Moved Upon The Earth. And So It Came To Pass That We Stepped Down There On A Place We Believed Unformed, Where Only Darkness Moved On The Face Of The Waters. Now You Laugh, Day And Night, While You Gnaw On My Bones. But What Else Could We Have Thought? Only That It Began And Ended With Us. What Do We Know, Even Now? Ask The Children. Look At What They Grew Up To Be. We Can Only Speak Of The Things We Carried With Us, And The Things We Took Away.

The Thing Is, It's My Own Fault. I Just Can't Put Up With A Person That Won't Go Out Of His Way For Me. And That's What A Man Is. Somebody That Won't Go Out Of His Way For You. I Bet It Says That In The Dictionary.

Will You Explain To Me Why People Encourage Delusional Behaviour In Children, And Medicate It In Adults?

There Are Days When I Am Envious Of My Hens: When I Hunger For A Purpose As Perfect And Sure As A Single Daily Egg.

Come To Think Of It, Just About Every Tool Was Shaped Like Either A Weenie Or A Pistol, Depending On Your Point Of View.

I Know I Have To Write About The Things That Keep Me Awake At Night.

He Needs To Go Rub His Soul Against Life.

Because I Write Fiction That Is Based In The Real World, It's Going To Lead People Into Some Of The Modern Dilemmas And Concerns And Even Catastrophes That They Will Think About In A New Way.

Nine-tenths Of Human Law Is About Possession.

If I Had To Give Up My Life For Anything, It Would Have To Have The Resilience Of Hope, The Elation Of New Literacy, The Brilliant Life Of A Field Of Flowers, The Elementary Kindness Of Bread. Nothing Short Of That. It Would Have To Be Something As Sure As Love.

From The Fallen Tree Everybody Makes Firewood.

God Doesn’t Need To Punish Us. He Just Grants Us A Long Enough Life To Punish Ourselves.

But Still, I’d Be Darned If I Was Going To Be One Of Those Americans Who Stomp Around Italy Barking Commands In Ever-louder English. I Was Going To Be One Of Those Americans Who Traversed Italy With My Forehead Knit In Concentration, Divining Wordsw From Their Latin Roots And Answering By Wedging French Cognates Into Italian Pronunciations Spliced Onto A Standard Spanish Verb Conjugation.

My Own Relationships With The Animals In My Life Are Absurdly Complex: Some I Love, Some I Eat, And The Scraps Left Over From The Ones I Eat, I Feed To The Ones I Love.

I Can Think Of No Honorable Answer. Why Must Some Of Us Deliberate Between Brands Of Toothpaste, While Others Deliberate Between Damp Dirt And Bone Dust To Quiet The Fire Of An Empty Stomach Lining? There Is Nothing About The United States I Can Really Explain To This Child Of Another World.

One Of The Very First Things I Figured Out About Life...is That It's Better To Be A Hopeful Person Than A Cynical, Grumpy One, Because You Have To Live In The Same World Either Way, And If You're Hopeful, You Have More Fun.

It's The One Thing We Never Quite Get Over: That We Contain Our Own Future.

Small Change, Small Wonders - These Are The Currency Of My Endurance And Ultimately Of My Life.

Stop A Minute, Right Where You Are. Relax Your Shoulders, Shake Your Head And Spine Like A Dog Shaking Off Cold Water. Tell That Imperious Voice In Your Head To Be Still.

Hallie And I... Were All There Was. The Image In The Mirror That Proves You Are Still Here. We Had Exactly One Sister Apiece. We Grew Up Knowing The Simple Arithmetic Of Scarcity: A Sister Is More Precious Than An Eye.

Culture Is A Slingshot Moved By The Force Of Its Past

The Reason Most People Have Kids Is Because They Get Pregnant.

...our Best Task Is To Move Forward Without Insisting Others Slide Backward.

I Could Never Work Out Whether We Were To View Religion As A Life-insurance Policy Or A Life Sentence.

Illusions Mistaken For Truth Are The Pavement Under Our Feet. They Are What We Call Civilization.

...prodigal Summer, The Season Of Extravagant Procreation. It Could Wear Out Everything In Its Path With Its Passionate Excesses, But Nothing Alive With Wings Or A Heart Or A Seed Curled Into Itself In The Ground Could Resist Welcoming It Back When It Came.

When Moral Superiority Combines With Billowing Ignorance, They Fill Up A Hot-air Balloon That's Awfully Hard Not To Poke.

Most People No Longer Believe That Buying Sneakers Made In Asian Sweatshops Is A Kindness To Those Child Laborers. Farming Is Similar. In Every Country On Earth, The Most Human Scenario For Farmers Is Likely To Be Feeding Those Who Live Nearby-if International Markets Would Allow Them To Do It. Food Transport Has Become A Bizarre And Profitable Economic Equation That's No Longer Really About Feeding Anyone ... If You Care About Farmers, Let The Potatoes Stay Home.

I'm Widest Awake As A Writer Doing Something New, Engaged In A Process I'm Not Sure I Can Finish, Generating At The Edge Of My Powers. Some People Bungee Jump; I Write.

I Love Developing Children As Characters. Children Rarely Have Important Roles In Literary Fiction - They Are Usually Defined As Cute Or Precious, Or They Create A Plot By Being Kidnapped Or Dying.

I Believe That The People Who Survive A Cataclysm, Rather Than Those Who Stand By And Analyze It, Are Nearly Always The More Credible Witnesses To Their Own History.

No Reporter Worth His Buttons Will Let The Facts Intrude On A Good Story.

You Know Reviewers, They Are The Wind In Their Own Sails.

That's How It Is: Some People Are Content To Wait Till You Ask, While Others Jump Right In With The Whole Story.

I Learned To Produce Whether I Wanted To Or Not. It Would Be Easy To Say Oh, I Have Writer's Block, Oh, I Have To Wait For My Muse. I Don't. Chain That Muse To Your Desk And Get The Job Done.

Maybe Life Doesn't Get Any Better Than This, Or Any Worse, And What We Get Is Just What We're Willing To Find: Small Wonders, Where They Grow.

Cooking Is 80 Percent Confidence, A Skill Best Acquired Starting From When The Apron Strings Wrap Around You Twice.

A Breeze Shook Rain Out Of New Leaves Onto Their Hair, But In Their Pursuit Of Eternity They Never Noticed The Chill.

So One Time When I Was Working In This Motel One Of The Toilets Leaked And I Had To Replace The Flapper Ball. Here's What It Said On The Package; I Kept It Till I Knew It By Heart: 'please Note. Parts Are Included For All Installations, But No Installation Requires All Of The Parts.' That's Kind Of My Philosophy About Men. I Don't Think There's An Installation Out There That Could Use All My Parts.

A Person Could Spend Most Of A Lifetime In Retrospective Terror, Thinking Of All The Things One Nearly Didn't Do.

Watching Italians Eat (especially Men, I Have To Say) Is A Form Of Tourism The Books Don't Tell You About. They Close Their Eyes, Raise Their Eyebrows Into Accent Marks, And Make Sounds Of Acute Appreciation. It's Fairly Sexy. Of Course I Don't Know How These Men Behave At Home, If They Help With The Cooking Or Are Vain And Boorish And Mistreat Their Wives. I Realized Mediterranean Cultures Have Their Issues. Fine, Don't Burst My Bubble. I Didn’t Want To Marry These Guys, I Just Wanted To Watch. (p. 247)

Food Is The Rare Moral Arena In Which The Ethical Choice Is Generally The One More Likely To Make You Groan With Pleasure.

You Always Need That Spark Of Imagination. Sometimes I'm Midway Through A Book Before It Happens. However, I Don't Wait For The Muse To Descend, I Sit Down Every Day And I Work When I'm Not Delivering Lambs On The Farm.

Something In Me Was Always Watching Life From The Outside, Permanently Obsessed With The Notion Of Belonging Vs. Not-belonging [to A Group]. It Did Not Make For A Happy Childhood, But It Was Excellent Training For A Writer.

Forgive Me, O Heavenly Father, According To The Multitude Of Thy Mercies. I Have Lusted In My Heart To Break A Man's Skull And Scatter The Stench Of His Brains Across Several People's Back Yards.

Pay Attention To Your Passions. They Are The Key To Starting And Finishing The Book You Are Meant To Write. I Don't Believe In Talent. I Believe In Passion.

You Think You're The Foreigner Here, And I'm The American, And I Just Look The Other Way While The President Or Somebody Sends Down This And That . . . To Torture People With. But Nobody Asked My Permission, Okay? Sometimes I Feel Like I'm A Foreigner, Too.

There's A Graveyard In Northern France Where All The Dead Boys From D-day Are Buried. The White Crosses Reach From One Horizon To The Other. I Remember Looking It Over And Thinking It Was A Forest Of Graves. But The Rows Were Like This, Dizzying, Diagonal, Perfectly Straight, So After All It Wasn't A Forest But An Orchard Of Graves. Nothing To Do With Nature, Unless You Count Human Nature.

Last Time I Talked To Her She Didn't Sound Like Herself. She's Depressed. It's Awful What Happens When People Run Out Of Money. They Start Thinking They're No Good.

It Occurs To Her That There Is One Thing About People You Can Never Understand Well Enough: How Entirely Inside Themselves They Are.

When You Pick Up A Novel From The Bed Side Table, You Put Down Your Own Life At The Same Time And You Become Another Person For The Duration.

It Is Completely Usual For Me To Get Up In The Morning, Take A Look Around, And Laugh Out Loud.

I Look At My Four Boys, Who Are The Colors Of Silt, Loam, Dust, And Clay, An Infinite Palette For Children Of Their Own, And I Understand That Time Erases Whiteness Altogether.

A Woman Without A Man -- A Condition Of 'manlessness' -- Is Defined As Alone. But A Single Mother Is Less Alone Than The Average Housewife.

What We End Up Calling History Is A Kind Of Knife, Slicing Down Through Time. A Few People Are Hard Enough To Bend Its Edge. But Most Won't Even Stand Close To The Blade. I'm One Of Those. We Don't Bend Anything.

People Love To Read About Sins And Errors, But Not Their Own.

Organization Is The Religion Of The Single Parent.

Scientific Illiteracy In Our Populations Is Leaving Too Many Of Us Unprepared To Discuss Or Understand Much Of The Damage We Are Wreaking On Our Atmosphere, Our Habitat, And Even The Food That Enters Our Mouths.

Children Model The Behavior Of Adults, On Whatever Scale Is Available To Them. Ours Are Growing Up In A Nation Whose Most Important, Influential Men - From Presidents To The Coolest Film Characters - Solve Problems By Killing People. ... We Have Taught Our Children In A Thousand Ways, Sometimes With Flag-waving And Sometimes With A Laugh Track, That The Bad Guy Deserves To Die.

He Lifts Her Breasts, Which Fit Perfectly Into His Hands, Though He Knows This Is No Promise That He Gets To Keep Them. A Million Things You Can't Have Will Fit In A Human Hand.

Literature Sucks You Into Another Psyche. So The Creation Of Empathy Necessarily Influences How You'll Behave To Other People.

...trust In Creation Which Is Made Fresh Daily And Doesn’t Suffer In Translation. This God Does Not Work In Especially Mysterious Ways. The Sun Here Rises And Sets At Six Exactly. A Caterpillar Becomes A Butterfly. A Bird Raises Its Brood In The Forest And A Greenheart Tree Will Only Grow From A Greenheart Seed. He Brings Drought Sometimes Followed By Torrential Rains And If These Things Aren’t Always What I Had In Mind, They Aren’t My Punishment Either. They’re Rewards, Let’s Say For The Patience Of A Seed.

Given My Own Circumstances, I Find That Anything Can Turn Out To Belong Nearly Anywhere.

Some Of Us Know How We Came By Our Fortune And Some Of Us Don't; But We Wear It All The Same

I've Always Seen The World Through The Eyes Of A Scientist. I Love The Predictable Outcomes That Science Gives Us, The Control Over The World That That Can Render.

Memory Runs Along Deep, Fixed Channels In The Brain, Like Electricity Along Its Conduits; Only A Cataclysm Can Make The Electrons Rear Up In Shock And Slide Over Into Another Channel. The Human Mind Seems Doomed To Believe, As Simply As A Rooster Believes, That Where We Are Now Is The Only Possibility

You Force People To Stop Asking Questions, And Before You Know It They Have Auctioned Off The Question Mark, Or Sold It For Scrap. No Boldness. No Good Ideas For Fixing What's Broken In The Land. Because If You Happen To Mention It's Broken, You Are Automatically Disqualified.

Asking Questions

Many Of Us Who Aren't Farmers Or Gardeners Still Have Some Element Of Farm Nostalgia In Our Family Past, Real Or Imagined: A Secret Longing For Some Connection To A Life Where A Rooster Crows In The Yard.

Every One Of Us Is Called Upon, Perhaps Many Times, To Start A New Life. A Frightening Diagnosis, A Marriage, A Move, Loss Of A Job...and Onward Full-tilt We Go, Pitched And Wrecked And Absurdly Resolute, Driven In Spite Of Everything To Make Good On A New Shore. To Be Hopeful, To Embrace One Possibility After Another--that Is Surely The Basic Instinct...crying Out: High Tide! Time To Move Out Into The Glorious Debris. Time To Take This Life For What It Is.

In The Day-to-day, Farm Work Is Stress Relief For Me. At The End Of The Day, I Love Having This Other Career - My Anti-job - That Keeps Me In Shape And Gives Me Control Over A Vegetal Domain.

I Do My Best Work If I Think About What It Is I Have To Offer.

Wherever I Am, Let Me Never Forget To Distinguish Want From Need

A Woman Knows She Can Walk Away From A Pot To Tend Something Else And The Pot Will Go On Boiling; If She Couldn't This World Would End At Once.

Corn Syrup And Added Fats Have Been Outed As Major Ingredients In Fast Food, But They Hide Out In Packaged Foods Too, Even Presumed-innocent Ones Like Crackers.

I Don't Look Like Who I Am.

I've About Decided That's The Main Thing That Separates Happy People From The Other People: The Feeling That You're A Practical Item, With A Use, Like A Sweater Or A Socket Wrench.

For If There Is Any Single Thing That Everyone Hopes For Most Dearly, It Must Be This: That The Youngest Outlive The Oldest.

A Good Title Holds Magic, Some Cognitive Dissonance, A Little Grit Between The Teeth, But Above All It Is The Jumping-off Place Into Wonder.

I Have Seen Women Looking At Jewelry Ads With A Misty Eye And One Hand Resting On The Heart, And I Only Know What They're Feeling Because That's How I Read The Seed Catalogs In January.

If You Never Stepped On Anybody's Toes, You Never Been For A Walk.

The Most Assiduous Task Of Parenting Is To Divine The Difference Between Boundaries And Bondage.

He Warned Mother Not To Flout God's Will By Expecting Too Much Of Us. "sending A Girl To College Is Like Pouring Water In Your Shoes,' He Still Loves To Say, As Often As Possible. 'it's Hard To Say Which Is Worse, Seeing It Run Out And Waste The Water, Or Seeing It Hold In And Wreck The Shoes.

How Strange To Read Of A Place In A Book, And Then Stand On It, Listen To The Birds Sing, And Spit On The Cobbles If You Want.

You Can Be As Earnest And Ridiculous As You Need To Be, If You Don't Attempt It In Isolation. The Ridiculously Earnest Are Known To Travel In Groups. And They Are Known To Change The World.

The Daily Work - That Goes On, It Adds Up.

Inspirational Life

The Power Is In The Balance: We Are Our Injuries, As Much As We Are Our Successes.

Want Is A Thing That Unfurls Unbidden Like Fungus, Opening Large Upon Itself, Stopless, Filling The Sky. But Needs, From One Day To The Next, Are Few Enough To Fit In A Bucket, With Room Enough Left To Rattle Like Brittle Brush In A Dry Wind.

Downstream Is Always Someone Else's Up.

But Nothing On This Earth Is Guaranteed, When You Get Right Down To It, You Know ? I've Been Thinking About That. About How Your Kids Aren't Really Yours, They're Just These People That You Try To Keep An Eye On, And Hope You'll All Grow Up Someday To Like Each Other And Still Be In One Piece. What I Mean Is, Everything You Get Is Really Just On Loan. Does That Make Sense?" Sure,"i Said. "like Library Books. Sooner Or Later They've All Got To Go Back Into The Nightdrop.

Nothing To Do With Nature, Unless You Count Human Nature.

War So Conspicuously Benefits Rich Men And Kills The Poor Ones.

I Did It To Win Love, And To Prove Myself Capable. Not To Move Mountains. In My Opinions, Mountains Don't Move. They Only Look Changed When You Look Down On Them From Great Height.

Fish Gotta Swim, Birds Gotta Fly, Writers Will Go To Stupefying Lengths To Get The Infernal Roar Of Words Out Of Their Skulls And Onto Paper.

People Read Books To Escape The Uncertainties Of Life.

Uncertainty Of Life

This Manuscript Of Yours That Has Just Come Back From Another Editor Is A Precious Package. Don't Consider It Rejected. Consider That You've Addressed It 'to The Editor Who Can Appreciate My Work' And It Has Simply Come Back Stamped 'not At This Address'. Just Keep Looking For The Right Address.

As A Biologist, I Can't Think Of Myself As Anything But An Animal Among Animals And Plant.

Wake Up Now, Look Alive, For Here Is A Day Off Work Just To Praise Creation: The Turkey, The Squash, And The Corn, These Things That Ate And Drank Sunshine, Grass, Mud, And Rain, And Then In The Shortening Days Laid Down Their Lives For Our Welfare And Onward Resolve. There's The Miracle For You, The Absolute Sacrifice That Still Holds Back Seed: A Germ Of Promise To Do The Whole Thing Again, Another Time. . . Thanksgiving Is Creation's Birthday Party. Praise Harvest, A Pause And Sigh On The Breath Of Immortality.

Fiction And Essays Can Create Empathy For The Theoretical Stranger.

A Meaningless Phrase Repeated Again And Again Begins To Resemble Truth.

Again And Again

There Are Some Who'd Hardly Lift A Finger For Kindness, But They Would Haul Up A Load Of Rock To Dump On Some Soul They Think's Been Too Lucky.

Over The Last Decade Our Country Has Lost An Average Of 300 Farms A Week. Large Or Small, Each Of Those Was The Lifes Work Of A Real Person Or Family, People Who Built Their Lives Around A Promise And Watched It Break.

Arterial-plaque Specials That Save Minutes Now Can Cost Years, Later On.

He Had Senile Dementia And Liked To Go Outside Naked, But He Could Still Do Two Things Perfectly: Win At Checkers And Write Out Prescriptions.

Poor Congo, Barefoot Bride Of Men Who Took Her Jewels And Promised The Kingdom.

Bitter Words Normally Evaporate With The Moisture Of Breath, After A Quarrel. In Order To Become Permanent, They Require Transcribers, Reporters, Complicit Black Hearts.

A Careless Way Of Sauntering Across The Earth And Breaking Open Its Treasures, A Terrible Dependency On Sucking Out The World's Best Juices For Ourselves-these May Also Be Our Enemies. The Changes We Dread Most May Contain Our Salvation.

We're Surrounded By Mandates, And I Believe That Literature Should Be Mandate-free. I Feel Very Strongly About That.

Terms Like That, 'humane Society,' Are Devised With People Like Me In Mind, Who Don't Care To Dwell On What Happens To The Innocent.

I Struggle With Confidence, Every Time. I’m Never Completely Sure I Can Write Another Book. Maybe My Scope Is Too Grand, My Questions Too Hard, Surely Readers Won’t Want To Follow Me Here. A Novel Is Like A Cathedral, It Knocks You Down To Size When You Enter Into It.

There Is Something In Us That Loves Certain Disasters And The Fever Of This Moment And Surrendering To That.

The Writing Has Been On The Wall For Some Years Now, But We Are A Nation Illiterate In The Language Of The Wall. The Writing Just Gets Bigger. Something Will Eventually Bring Down The Charming, Infuriating Naïveté Of Americans That Allows Us Our Blithe Consumption And Cheerful Ignorance Of The Secret Ugliness That Bring Us Whatever We Want.

But We've All Ended Up Giving Body And Soul To Africa, One Way Or Another. Even Adah, Who's Becoming An Expert In Tropical Epidemiology And Strange New Viruses. Each Of Us Got Our Heart Buried In Six Feet Of African Dirt; We Are All Co-conspirators Here. I Mean, All Of Us, Not Just My Family. So What Do You Do Now? You Get To Find Your Own Way To Dig Out A Heart And Shake It Off And Hold It Up To The Light Again.

On The Day I Swore To Uphold The Hippocratic Oath, The Small Hairs On The Back Of My Neck Stood Up As I Waited For Lightning To Strike. Who Was I, Vowing Calmly Among All These Necktied Young Men To Steal Life Out Of Nature's Jaws, Every Old Time We Got Half A Chance And A Paycheck?... I Could Not Accept The Contract: That Every Child Born Human Upon This Earth Comes With A Guarantee Of Perfect Health And Old Age Clutched In Its Small Fist.

Be Still, And The World Is Bound To Turn Herself Inside Out To Entertain You. Everywhere You Look, Joyful Noise Is Clanging To Drown Out Quiet Desperation.

Our Plans Are Small And Somewhat Absurd.

Oh, Mercy. If It Catches You In The Wrong Frame Of Mind, The King James Bible Can Make You Want To Drink Poison In No Uncertain Terms.

But Anatole Said Suddenly, 'don't Expect God's Protection In Places Beyond God's Dominion. It Will Only Make You Feel Punished. I'm Warning You. When Things Go Bad, You Will Blame Yourself.' 'what Are You Telling Me?' 'i Am Telling You What I'm Telling You. Don't Try To Make Life A Mathematics Problem With Yourself In The Center And Everything Coming Out Equal. When You Are Good, Bad Things Can Still Happen. And If You Are Bad, You Can Still Be Lucky.

I Think The Most Interesting Parts Of Human Experience Might Be The Sparks That Come From That Sort Of Chipping Flint Of Cultures Rubbing Against Each Other.

Americans Who Read And Think Are Patriots Of The First Order. The Kind Who Know Enough To Roll Their Eyes Whenever Anyone Tries To Claim Sole Custody Of The Flag And Weild It As A Blunt Instrument. There Are As Many Ways To Love America As There Are Americans, And Our Country Needs Us All.

It Is Harrowing For Me To Try To Teach 20-year-old Students, Who Earnestly Want To Improve Their Writing. The Best I Can Think To Tell Them Is: Quit Smoking, And Observe Posted Speed Limits. This Will Improve Your Odds Of Getting Old Enough To Be Wise.

Literature Duplicates The Experience Of Living In A Way That Nothing Else Can, Drawing You So Fully Into Another Life That You Temporarily Forget You Have One Of Your Own. That Is Why You Read It, And Might Even Sit Up In Bed Till Early Dawn, Throwing Your Whole Tomorrow Out Of Whack, Simply To Find Out What Happens To Some People Who, You Know Perfectly Well, Are Made Up.

It's As If Cats Live In A Seperate Universe That Takes Up The Same Space As Ours, But Is Full Of Facinating Things Like Mice Or Sparrows Or Special Tv Programs That We Can't See.

Maybe He's Been In Africa So Long He Has Forgotten That We Christians Have Our Own System Of Marriage, And It Is Called Monotony.

Life Proceeds, It Enrages. The Untouched Ones Spend Their Luck Without A Thought, Believing They Deserve It.

If The Lord Hasn't Got A Boyfriend Lined Up For Me To Marry, That's His Business.

A Choir Of Seedlings Arching Their Necks Out Of Rotted Tree Stumps, Sucking Life Out Of Death. I Am The Forest's Conscience, But Remember, The Forest Eats Itself And Lives Forever.

This Is What It Means To Be Alone: Everyone Is Connected To Everyone Else, Their Bodies Are A Bright Liquid Life Flowing Around You, Sharing A Single Heart That Drives Them To Move All Together. If The Shark Comes They Will All Escape, And Leave You To Be Eaten.

If You're Standing In The Manure Pile, It's Somebody's Job To Mention The Stink.

Ah, The Mysterious Croak. Here Today, Gone Tomorrow. It's The Best Reason I Can Think Of To Throw Open The Blinds And Risk Belief. Right Now, This Minute, Time To Move Out Into The Grief And Glory. High Tide.

Let Me Claim That Africa And I Kept Company For A While And Then Parted Ways As If We Were Both Party To Relations With A Failed Outcome. Or Say I Was Afflicted With Africa Like A Bout Of A Rare Disease From Which I Have Not Managed A Full Recovery.

With All Due Respect For The Wondrous Ways People Have Invented To Amuse Themselves And One Another On Paved Surfaces, I Find That This Exodus From The Land Makes Me Unspeakably Sad. I Think Of The Children Who Will Never Know, Intuitively, That A Flower Is A Plant's Way Of Making Love, Or What Silence Sounds Like, Or That Trees Breathe Out What We Breathe In.

The Way I See It, A Person Isn't Nothing More Than A Scarecrow... The Only Difference Between One That Stands Up Good And One That Blows Over Is What Kind Of A Stick They're Stuck Up There On.

It's The Thing You Fear Most That Walks Beside You All The Time.

My Way Of Finding A Place In This World Is To Write One.

I've Never Gotten Over High School, To The Extent That I'm Still A Little Surprised That My Friends Want To Hang Out With Me.

The Novel Is Inherently A Political Instrument, Regardless Of Its Subject. It Invites You - More Than Invites You, Induces You - To Live Inside Another Person's Skin. It Creates Empathy. And That's The Antidote To Bigotry. The Novel Doesn't Just Tell You About Another Life, Which Is What A Newspaper Would Do. It Makes You Live Another Life, Inhabit Another Perspective. And That's Very Important.

It's Tough To Break Yourself As News To A Town That Already Knows You.

I Don't *ever* Write About Real People. Art Is Supposed To Be Better Than That. If You Want A Slice Of Life, Look Out The Window.

Your Dreams, What You Hope For And All That, It's Not Separate From Your Life. It Grows Right Up Out Of It.

Quit Smoking In The Hope Of Growing Old. It Takes A Long Time To Write. People Go To Books For Wisdom And Older Authors Tend To Have More Of It.

Tomorrow These Villagers Would Carry Their Secret Icons Into The Church Without Any Priest And Light The Candles Themselves, Moving Together In Single-minded Grace. Like The School Of The Fish, So Driven To Righteousness They Could Flout The Law, Declare The Safety Of Their Souls, Then Go Home And Destroy The Evidence.

I Know How People Are, With Their Habits Of Mind. Most Will Sail Through From Cradle To Grave With A Conscience Clean As Snow...i Know People. Most Have No Earthly Notion Of The Price Of A Snow-white Conscience.

I Have My Own Sheep And I Literally Sheer The Sheep And Knot Sweaters For Friends And Family From Scratch.

Family And Friends

My Worst Nightmare Is Being Stuck Somewhere With Nothing To Read.

Worst Nightmares

What Keeps You Going Isn't Some Fine Destination But Just The Road You're On, And The Fact That You Know How To Drive.

Food Culture In The United States Has Long Been Cast As The Property Of A Privileged Class. It Is Nothing Of The Kind. Culture Is The Property Of A Species.

Growing Food Was The First Activity That Gave Us Enough Prosperity To Stay In One Place, Form Complex Social Groups, Tell Our Stories, And Build Our Cities.

The Longer You Live, The More Likely You Are To Have Something To Say.

My Life Is A Pitiful, Mechanical Thing Without A Past, Like A Little Wind-up Car, Ready To Run In Any Direction Someone Points Me.

You Can’t Replace People You Love With Other People…but You Can Trust That You’re Not Going To Run Out Of People To Love.

A Dog Can't Think That Much About What He's Doing, He Just Does What Feels Right.

Our Holiday Food Splurge Was A Small Crate Of Tangerines, Which We Found Ridiculously Thrilling After An Eight-month Abstinence From Citrus.... Lily Hugged Each One To Her Chest Before Undressing It As Gently As A Doll. Watching Her Do That As She Sat Cross-legged On The Floor One Morning In Pink Pajamas, With Bliss Lighting Her Cheeks, I Thought: Lucky Is The World, To Receive This Grateful Child. Value Is Not Made Of Money, But A Tender Balance Of Expectation And Longing.

If My Setting Is New To A Reader, Or The Concerns Of The Novel Are New, I Hope They Will Learn Something About The World. I Would Like To Say That They Can Trust That What They Do Learn In The Novel Will Be Accurate, Because I Pay A Lot Of Attention To Facts. I Do A Lot Of Research To Make Sure That I'm Not Giving Them, You Know, Blue Moons Of Jupiter. It's Not Science Fiction.

When I Want To Take God At His Word Exactly, I Take A Peep Out The Window At His Creation. Because That, Darling, He Makes Fresh For Us Everyday.

When We Traded Homemaking For Careers, We Were Implicitly Promised Economic Independence And Worldly Influence. But A Devil Of A Bargain It Has Turned Out To Be In Terms Of Daily Life. We Gave Up The Aroma Of Warm Bread Rising, The Measured Pace Of Nurturing Routines, The Creative Task Of Molding Our Families' Tastes And Zest For Life; We Received In Exchange The Minivan And The Lunchable.

There Are People Who Read My Work And Accuse Me Of Being Political! As Far As I'm Concerned That's Like Accusing A Dog Of Having A Bark!

Do You Think Its Possible To Live Without Wanting To Put Your Name On Your Paintings? To Belong To A Group So Securely You Don't Need To Rise Above It?

Like Daniel She Enteres The Lions' Den, But Lacking Daniel's Pure And Unblemished Soul, Ada Is Spiced With The Flavors Of Vice That Make For A Tasty Meal. Pure And Unblemished Souls Must Taste Very Bland, With An Aftertaste Of Bitterness.

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