Beth

“While the train flashed through never-ending miles of ripe wheat, by country towns and bright-flowered pastures and oak groves wilting in the sun, we sat in the observation car, where the woodwork was hot to the touch and red dust lay deep over everything. The dust and heat, the burning wind, reminded us of many things. We were talking about what it is like to spend one’s childhood in little towns like these, buried in wheat and corn, under stimulating extremes of climate: burning summers when the world lies green and billowy beneath a brilliant sky, when one is fairly stifled in vegetation, in the color and smell of strong weeds and heavy harvests; blustery winters with little snow, when the whole country is stripped bare and gray as sheet-iron. We agreed that no one who had not grown up in a little prairie town could know anything about it. It was a kind of freemasonry, we said.”
― Willa Cather, My Ántonia

“I also talk a lot in Deeper Reading about the importance that confusion plays. When my students come to me, they think confusion is bad. They are wrong. Confusion is the place where learning occurs.”
― Kelly Gallagher

“Guys always think tears are a sign of weakness. They’re a sign of FRUSTRATION. She’s only crying so she won’t cut your throat in your sleep. So make nice and be grateful.”
― Donna Barr

“FDR recoiled from the plebeian food foisted on him as president; perhaps no dish was more off-putting to him than what home economists referred to as “salads,” assemblages made from canned fruit, cream cheese, gelatin, and mayonnaise.”
― Jane Ziegelman, A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression