“Our house is like an empty cigarette packet, lying around reminding you what’s not in it.”

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.

We agreed with him in principal – we were little scientists, born and bred. But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.

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.

We’re animals. We’re born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts.

I never think that anything I’m writing is bluntly political in any way. I’m not going for commentary.

Tall and straight I may appear, but I will always be Ada inside. A crooked little person trying to tell the truth. The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes

Friends, there is nothing like your own family to make you appreciate strangers!

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

Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history.

What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness.

… Urban friends ask me how I can stand living here, ‘so far from everything?’ When I hear this question over the phone, I’m usually looking out the window at a forest, a running creek, and a vegetable garden, thinking: Define everything.

People ask without wanting to know.

Finally, cooking is good citizenship. It’s the only way to get serious about putting locally raised foods into your diet, which keeps farmlands healthy and grocery money in the neighborhood.

Your dreams, what you hope for and all that, it’s not separate from your life. It grows right up out of it.

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.

It’s surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.