Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.
My mind is like a room where the door swings free in the breeze, and many visitors come and go and stay and vanish as they will.
Had I faced all the facts It seemed like I had but actually you never know just by remembering how many there were to have faced.
The fundamental condition of childhood is powerlessness.
Arthur said, You must know that you don’t love children for being good or bad. I know you know that.Why do you love them?Because you do, said Arthur. Because they don’t know what’s coming and maybe you do.
Every spot on earth is particular, detailed, and incomprehensibly complex.
In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it.
This is true, at the least, that no veil of beauty hides the evils from our sight.
There were no toys under the bed–that wasn’t why he liked it. Why he liked it was that there wasn’t anything under the bed–no chickens, no Joey, no Eloise, no sheep, no “no”s. He could lie under the bed and not be told anything at all.
There were no toys under the bed–that wasn’t why he liked it. Why he liked it was that there wasn’t anything under the bed–no chickens, no Joey, no Eloise, no sheep, no “no”s. He could lie under the bed and not be told anything at all
Almonds. Apricots. Avocadoes. Some peaches I don’t know. Grapefruit. Lemones. Probably oranges.
She always said, ‘When I’m home, I’ve got to get things done, even if there are visitors. Elizabeth knows how to relax in her own house.’ And then she would shake her head, as if Elizabeth had remarkable powers.
A child who is protected from all controversial ideas is as vulnerable as a child who is protected from every germ. The infection, when it comes- and it will come- may overwhelm the system, be it the immune system or the belief system.
Twenty-five, he was. Twenty-five tomorrow. Some years the snow had melted for his birthday, but not this year, and so it had been a long winter full of cows.
But he was sixty-two when I was, born, and the novelty of daughters had worn away long before.
In my experience there is only one motivation and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it.
English majors understand human nature better than economists do.
The only siblings I have are half-siblings. My nuclear family would have been an extra-suffocating threesome. Instead, I have an interesting brother and sister, in-laws, and darling nephews.
I loved the house the way you would any new house, because it is populated by your future, the family of children who will fill it with noise or chaos and satisfying busy pleasures.
When a novel has 200,000 words, then it is possible for the reader to experience 200,000 delights, and to turn back to the first page of the book and experience them all over again, perhaps more intensely.
I discovered that the horse is life itself, a metaphor but also an example of life’s mystery and unpredictability, of life’s generosity and beauty, a worthy object of repeated and ever changing contemplation.
If to live is to progress, if you are lucky, from foolishness to wisdom, then to write novels is to broadcast the various stages of your foolishness.