“Sometimes I knew in all my mind and heard why I had done what I had done, and I welcomed the sacrifice. But there were times too when I lived in a desert and felt no joy and saw no hope and could not remember my old feelings. Then I lived by faith alone, faith without hope.What good did I get from it? I got to have love in my heart.”

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.