We teach punctuality, particularly if the enforcement of it disturbs the peace.

I spend several days and nights in mid-September with an ailing pig and I feel driven to account for this stretch of time, more particularly since the pig died at last, and I lived, and things might easily have gone the other way round and none left to do the accounting.

I discovered, though, that once having given a pig an enema there is no turning back, no chance of resuming one of life's more stereotyped roles. The pig's lot and mine were inextricably bound now, as though the rubber tube were the silver cord.

Ever before us is home's immensity, / Always within us its sheer intensity.

Home is the strangest of common places, / Drenched with the light of familiar faces.

I was a flop as a daily reporter. Every piece had to be a masterpiece—and before you knew it, Tuesday was Wednesday.

I think of those first five years in Maine as the time when this happened to me... I was suddenly seeing, feeling, and listening as a child sees, feels, and listens.

You can certainly learn to spell 'moccasin' while driving into Maine, and there is often little else to do, except steer and avoid death.

I would really rather feel bad in Maine than good anywhere else.

At this season the sparrows are particularly conspicuous because they are in love—and love addles any creature and makes him noisy.