“Happiness is an accident of nature, a beautiful and flawless aberration.”

“Southerners had a long tradition of looking for religious significance in even the most humble forms of nature, and I always preferred the explanations of folklore to the icy interpretations of sci...”

“I cannot express how lordly and transfigured I felt at that moment. I was a prince of that harbor, a porpoise king - slim among the buoys and the water traffic.”

“This [sand-dollar hunting] had become one of our rituals together, and though she would search for other varieties of shells when I was out of town or unable to see her, she would wait until I appe...”

“I loved these salt rivers more than I loved the sea; I loved the movement of tides more than I loved the fury of surf. Something in me was congruent with this land, something affirmed when I witnes...”

“It was in her garden that whatever physical grace Abigail St. Croix possessed asserted itself. She moved among her flowers with consummate natural fluidity, enjoying the incommunicable pleasures of...”

“People give me looks of pity and ask me why I want to wallow in my disconnection from a very connected world. It is simple. The world seems way too connected to me now. It seems to be ruining the l...”

“Generally, writers descend from a lesser tribe, and whatever claim to beauty we have shows up on the printed page far more often than it does in our mirrors. Even as I writer these words I think of...”

“Ive always felt a vague sense of guilt that I search for plunder and inspiration in every book or poem or story I pick up. Other peoples books are treasures when stories emerge in molten ingots tha...”

“Teachers are mind engineers! Teachers are life directors! Dont ever undermine a teacher!”

“Even we set aside the nearly 50 percent of all beginner teachers who choose to leave the profession within five yearsand ignore the evidence that those who leave are worse performers than those who...”

“One thing I more and this is all I have to say...High School is not a separate unit from you. We are apart of you. Every man, woman, and child in this community is a part...Your ways of life in you...”

“You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.”

“It is easier to write a book with footnotes than the same book written so that children can understand it.”

“I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.”