...but these backwaters of existence sometimes breed, in their sluggish depths, strange acuities of emotion... ("Afterward")

City people. They may know how to street fight but they don't know how to wade through manure.

Love's absence ailed me. I could not imagine loving my husband. He was a superior and I did not know how to love and be subservient together. Nor had he ever thought of me as a human being, let alone a woman. For no reason had he ever softened towards me, I had stirred him that little.

In small towns, news travels at the speed of boredom.

The use of methamphetamines has become pervasive in our country, and especially in rural areas.

I like rural areas.