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Jag måste lära mig att bo i mindre hus Måste vänja mig vid att dörren leder rakt genom köket och att trädgården är en plats för rekreation; något mer än en veranda

Stora hus har en farlig benägenhet att börja kräva uppmärksamhet Det var därför vi bytte Därför skrev vi i annonsen: "Stort hus bytes mot mindre"

Så helt vansinnigt handlat I De Stora Husens Tid

— Resa med Cortez by Peter Lindforss (Page 100)

As a kid, Frank spent time in the levee camps down by the river, living with his family for months at a time among black laborers. Once an interviewer asked him, “What did you learn by growing up with black people?” and Frank answered, “How shitty white people are to them.”

— Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You by Lucinda Williams (35%)

One of my father’s favorite stories was about when he met Hank Williams a few months before I was born, in January 1953. He went to see Hank play a show right there in Lake Charles, where my parents were living. He was bound and determined to meet him afterward. My dad adored Hank and his music, and I think, besides the shared last name, he just felt a kinship with him. They looked somewhat alike, too—tall and kind of lanky and gangly looking, with high cheekbones. It almost seems that they could have been related.

After Hank’s show, my dad went up and introduced himself, and they ended up at a bar close to the venue, some place that Hank suggested. It was a gas station that served drinks; there were lots of places like that back then. The way my dad told the story, he and Hank were talking about how neither of them had any money growing up. He told Hank about being from Arkansas, a simple working-class family, his dad a Methodist preacher, and now he was a poet and a beatnik college professor. At some point Hank asked my dad what he wanted to drink and my dad asked for a bourbon and water. Hank said, “Williams, you ought to be drinking beer ’cuz you got a beer-drinkin’ soul.” Hank meant that even though my father had gotten a college education and had become a professor, he was still connected to that part of the working-class world. My father would tell this story over and over. It might have been the most important lesson he ever taught me, to be able to accept and move in both the world you were born into and the world you found on your own.

A short time after that Hank died, and I was born three and a half weeks later.

— Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You by Lucinda Williams (15%)

My father was first a scientist and then a poet—not your typical career trajectory—and always scrambling around for teaching jobs. He didn’t get a permanent teaching job until I was eighteen years old. By then we had lived in twelve different towns since I was born. I can remember nine of them. They say moving is one of the most stressful things that happens in life. Well, I moved twelve times before I was eighteen.

— Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You by Lucinda Williams (10%)