the face. “So, I want to ask you something. Could Jesus eat pork? He was a Jew, you know. And people down here love barbecue.”

I simply help people sit still long enough to see what is already there.”

“This conversation is my work today,”

Whether the art is sculpture, farming, teaching, lawmaking, medicine, music, or raising a child, if love is not in it — at the very heart of it — it might be skillful, marketable, or popular but I doubt it is truly good. Nothing is what it’s supposed to be if love is not at the core.”

“It’s hard enough to define what art is, much less ‘good art.’ I wonder if there is such a thing. Maybe there are just good responses. But I guess if a work of art makes us see something familiar in a new way or makes us feel something we ought to have felt all along or shows us our place in the world more clearly, maybe then it qualifies as

But I like to always have something I’m working on for the sheer pleasure of being creative. That one,” Asher pointed to the river scene on the easel, “is my present diversion. Ones like that usually don’t sell, but they pay me in other ways. They help keep me in love with what I do.

The ten-year-old had been the unexpected jewel of a loveless marriage, the raison d’être of the then-young man’s life and the inspiration for all he hoped to do in the world. From rocky soil in which opposites had first been attracted and then repelled into cold civility, this flower of promise had bloomed. She dethroned all of Theo’s previous

unspeakable injustices — were carried out on the strong limbs of those trees.

As Tony spoke, he felt the old man’s warm, fearless gaze. His eyes were clear and alert, a blend of melancholy and good humor.