I read Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," all of Shirley Jackson's books, which I loved.

Some people say, 'Save yourself and you save your ways.' I say, 'Be yourself and you save your soul.

What was a rose but the living proof of desire, the single best evidence of human longing and earthly devotion. but desire could be twisted,after all, and Jealousy was the name of the rose that did well in arid souls.

Holding a tear back makes them drain upward, higher and higher, until one day your head just explodes and you're left with a stub of a neck and nothing more.

My mother's blood that would last forever after. The blood of my brother, my grandfather, my father.

It was a great escape for me and it was a way to take a break from what was going on in my own world, to go into another world.

Hawthorne has given us a tradition that some people refer to as Yankee Magic Realism, and I do think there is a certain quality to the landscape that definitely leads into the dark woods.