In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.
I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room.
Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It’s everyone’s, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet.
He was my father. I own half his genes, and all of his history. Believe this: the mistakes are part of the story. I am born of a man who believed he could tell nothing but the truth, while he set down for all time the Poisonwood Bible.
The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.
The happiest people are the ones with the most community.
Eaters must understand, how we eat determines how the world is used.
Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives.
Even feigning surprise, pretending it was unexpected and saying a ritual thanks, is surely wiser than just expecting everything so carelessly.
I considered her my ally, because, like me, she was imperfect.
Why is it that only girls stand on the sides of their feet? As if they’re afraid to plant themselves?
I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I’d written.
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.
How pointless life could be, what a foolish business of inventing things to love, just so you could dread losing them.
The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don’t know.
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.
Listen. Slide the weight from your shoulders and move forward. You are afraid you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember.
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.
Like kids who only ever get socks for Christmas, but still believe with all their hearts in Santa.
Don’t wait for the muse. She has a lousy work ethic. Writers just write.