Ellen Gilchrist Quotes

All you have to do to educate a child is leave him alone and teach him to read. The rest is brainwashing.

Everything in the world had happened to them and kept on happening. They didn't care. They liked it that way.

One thing I know is that it is a bad idea to marry someone who had bad parents. If they hated their mother, if they were hated by their mother or father, your marriage will pay for it in ways both obvious and subtle. When the chips are down, when someone is sick or loses their job or gets scared, the old patterns will kick in and he will treat you the way he treated his mother or the way she treated him.

Don't ruin the present with the ruined past.

Work is the thing that stays. Work is the thing that sees us through.

I haven't written poetry in a long time but I read it and I miss it. It is so hard to write. So hard to finish, so hard to find the exact word to make it shine. In honor of my youth I will write a poem to finish this essay. It is spring in the Ozark Mountains. The yellow flowers are blooming and the birds wake me at dawn and last night five planets lined up by the moon in the western sky. If that doesn't inspire me to poetry what will?