You could love your crazy people, even admire them, instead of resenting that they're not self-sufficient..

Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It's everyone's, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet..

Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization..

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 pin….

Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing..

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 h….

Mistakes wreck your life. But they make what you have. It's kind of all one. You know what Hester told me when we were working the sheep one time? Sh….

A mother's body remembers her babies-the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has it's own entreaties to body an….

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 ….

It's a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can't begin to understand the question. For me, the discipline is turning of….

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 n….

The bad thing about small-town life is that everybody knows your business...I suppose that is my central obsession. What we owe to society, what we o….

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 s….

I stir in bed and the memories rise out of me like a buzz of flies from a carcass. I crave to be rid of them..

Prayer had always struck me as more or less a glorified attempt at a business transaction..

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 i….

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. ….

What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity..

Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn't rip off..

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 ….

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 ….