If you’re looking for good fiction, I commend to you Wendell Berry. Jayber Crow is a wonderful place to begin.
Burley Coulter is the man in Berry fiction. My favorite quote may be the one found in this post . . .Or, in this one. But, here is another quality Burley Coulter response.
They found a certain wondrous glee in the joke of getting old, and they varied it endlessly.
“Age,” said River Bill Thacker toward the end of a conversation to the general effect that time, contrary to expectation, made old men out of young ones. “Age has done more for my morals that Methodism ever did.”
“Well,” Burley said, “thinking maybe of his mother’s years of dying away by bits,” some people live a long time.”
Catching his tone, Bill said, “What’s the matter with living a long time? It ain’t going to kill you.”
“No,” Burley said. “Not for a long time.”
Please help me find Wendell Barry’s essay, “How to Be Alive”
Thanks Carol
Carol, he has a poem along those lines in the Given collection. I have a couple of essay collections and I didn’t see that one.