Do people choose the art that inspires them — do they think it over, decide they might prefer the fabulous to the real? For me, it was those early readings of fairy tales that made me who I was as a reader and, later on, as a storyteller.

I wasn't quite as certain that I knew her soul. When it came right down to it, I wasn't sure she knew me either.

My sorrow is I used to read all the time and now, as a writer, I don't have the time to read.

He was in love, and people in that condition did stupid, unfathomable things. They were all flawed, every single one.

I wept to think that life went on even when so much had been lost, that rain still fell and myrtle grew between the rocks.

When the cold comes to New England it arrives in sheets of sleet and ice. In December, the wind wraps itself around bare trees and twists in between husbands and wives asleep in their beds. It shakes the shingles from the roofs and sifts through cracks in the plaster. The only green things left are the holly bushes and the old boxwood hedges in the village, and these are often painted white with snow. Chipmunks and weasels come to nest in basements and barns; owls find their way into attics. At night,the dark is blue and bluer still, as sapphire of night.

My grandmother was overwhelmed by what was happening to us. She ahd moved back into the past because the here and the now was too terrible.