“Prayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart. It is like a bird that has blundered down the flue and is caught indoors and flutters at the windowpanes. It is like standing a long time on a cold day, knocking at a shut door.”

American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic and farmer

Wendell Berry is an American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer, closely associated with rural Kentucky. He is known for writing across fiction, poetry, and essays about agrarian life, rural community, and the ties between people, land, and work. His agrarian ideas appear strongly in essays such as The Unsettling of America and The Gift of Good Land. He also returned often to the imagined world of Port William in novels and stories including A Place on Earth, Jayber Crow, and That Distant Land, where the culture and economy of rural life are central.