Beautiful is a word for young people. Beauty is a phase you grow through, like acne. - Peter S. Beagle

You may plant your acres again and raise up your fallen orchard and vineyards, but they will never flourish as they used to, never — until you learn to take joy in them, for no reason.

He sighed, telling himself that the inevitable is a great blessing to a man weary of making choices.

I am a black stone, the size of a kitchen stove. They wash me in the stream every summer and sing over me. I am skulls and cocks, spring rain and the blood of the bull. Virgins lie with strangers in my name, the young priests throw pieces of themselves at my stone feet. I am white corn, and the wind in the corn, and the earth whereof the corn stands up, and the blind worms rolled in an oozy ball of love at the corn's roots. I am rut and flood and honeybees.