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Louise Farmer Smith

Her body had become a scale, a device for measuring grief.

It was hard to know what memories or images had marked him.

Sometimes you weren’t a good daughter, the mother says.

With a world full of foolishly dangerous men, what’s a mother to do?

As our friendship declined into torture, the prairie grew hotter.

She wags her index finger so furiously that I’m certain it will snap off.

It’s a girls’ college we’re going to, but all the guys know Polly’s name.

Elinor had loved a man. The journey’s purpose was that she might forget.

His mother’s face had been that pretty, though more resigned.

Heaven preserve me from the Epidemic of a Proud Ignorance!

I watched to see how the others lived, not knowing I was the Other.

These days I watch the world go by and do not breathe life into it.

What were the unsafe things to say even in a thirty-year marriage?

There are parts of a man that are born again with each of his daughters.

I must never go to the garden without a heavy stick or a corn-knife.

I keep dripping milk until I’m sitting in a pool of it, sticky, white. I can’t move.

She rocks quickly from side to side, proud, lifting herself higher.

I sensed that a name defined who I was and would be in the future.

I’ve found that love has provided my life’s happiest moments.

A friend of my father’s once told me, “You’ll never be a writer.”

Favorite character? What a question. It’s like choosing a favorite child.

A more typical writing day for me is being constantly interrupted.

I once heard in a sermon, “Choose the important over the urgent.”

Every really good book on first reading is life changing.

I simply wrapped my arms around Maxey and held on for dear life.

The Great Gatsby had an awful, detrimental effect on me.

Best part of the day? The part when I come up with an idea for a cartoon.

I don’t own a smartphone and never will. I’ve never sent a text.