For many years, it seemed as if nothing changed in Norway. You could leave the country for three months, travel the world, through coups d'etat, assassinations, famines, massacres and tsunamis, and come home to find that the only new thing in the newspapers was the crossword puzzle.

Happy the man whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air in his own ground.

In its history, Europe has committed so many massacres and horrors that it should bow its own head in shame.

We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres, or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

Maybe that's what all lives were, though. Maybe even the most seemingly perfectly intense or worthwhile lives ultimately felt the same. Acres of disappointment and monotony and hurts and rivalries but with flashes of wonder and beauty. Maybe that was the only meaning that mattered. To be the world, witnessing itself.

For many years it seemed as if nothing changed in Norway. You could leave the country for three months travel the world through coups d'etat assassinations famines massacres and tsunamis and come home to find that the only new thing in the newspapers was the crossword puzzle.

When I was little we lived on 8 acres and my mom had a horse. But when I was 7 my mom kicked my dad out and then in order to feed us five kids she got critters cheap or for free and raised them for food. We milked a cow raised chickens pigs and beef cattle. We heated our one-story house with wood and stayed cold all winter.

In its history Europe has committed so many massacres and horrors that it should bow its own head in shame.

We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres or a little money and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth and for the great benefits of our being our life health and reason we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.

But I am Armenian and I understand what it is to lose a country and lose a family and have massacres and genocides and everything against my people.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.