“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.”

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.

Of the two hundred bones in the human body, more than a quarter are in the foot. It is a more complicated instrument than an automobile transmission, and it is treated with far less consideration.

Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

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.

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.

I was angry and frustrated until I started my own family and my first child was born. Until then I didn’t really appreciate life the way I should have, but fortunately I woke up.

We appreciate yesterday, but we’re looking for a better tomorrow.

The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.

Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!

Trade your expectations for appreciation and the world changes for you.

Men and women balance each other out, and we have to get to a point where we are comfortable with appreciating each other.

My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.