“You can die trying to get along with a disagreeable man,” she said, and I put a star beside it when I wrote it down and then taped it to the rear-view mirror for the rest of the drive. She hadn’t said “abusive,” I noticed; she had said that just disagreeable could kill you.”

“You have to not care whether they approve of your or not,” she said when I called. “We do what we do to express ourselves, not to coincide with what others like. You’re lucky if they like anything you do.”

“I closed the door. Other people got husbands and children; I got a bag of lettuce. I hurled myself on the floor and sobbed. The worst thing about trying to get myself undepressed were the days when it seemed like I hadn’t made any progress at all.”

“It was obvious that the woman was trying to turn over a new leaf, so we bought all her bowls. I got a gigantic stoneware one with a flat bottom, like you’d use if you were making bread for the whole army, and I knew I would have to change my whole life to have a use for this bowl.”

“Canning is a whole world of a thing to do. It requires that you get out of your head. It's a Zen thing. You cannot be wondering about your inadequacies and how they drove Bob off and be making jelly. You'll wind up with big, cylindrical jujubes.”

“Your like Martha Stewart on crack,” my neighbor shouted as I stuck another cardinal in with the daisies.”

“She lifted her head. "It's easier," she said, slowly, "to be angry on someone else's behalf than on my own. And yet I find I have a well of anger in me, that I have been filling for years from my own hurts. If I spill it out in defense of another, I can deny it's mine.”