Add water, and the soil is so fertile that you could plant a pencil and harvest a book. - Mary Doria Russell

If you learn something from each person you meet and from each book you read, you will be the best-educated person in the world.

After all, Ignatius of Loyola, a soldier who had killed and whored and made a thorough mess of his soul, said you could judge prayer worthwhile simply if you could act more decently, think more clearly afterward. As D.W. once told him, “Son, sometimes it’s enough just to act less like a shithead.

Dust rises at every step, fine as flour. It is dried river silt, that dust. Add water, and the soil is so fertile that you could plant a pencil and harvest a book.