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.

That was the way illness appeared in a house, in the corners, in between floorboards, on the hooks in the closet, along with the sweaters and coats.

That's the way love sounds, my mother told me. You think it should feel like honey, but instead it cuts like a knife.

Even in times when it's difficult to figure out, how do you go forward, art - and books - always help

Once you know some things, you can't unknow them. It's a burden that can never be given away.

I always felt and still feel that fairy tales have an emotional truth that is so deep that there are few things that really rival them

My grandmother told me once that when you lose somebody you think you've lost the whole world as well, but that's not the way things turn out in the end. Eventually, you pick yourself up and look out the window, and once you do you see everything that was there before the world ended is out there still. There are the same apple trees and the same songbirds, and over our heads, the very same sky that shines like heaven, so far above us we can never hope to reach such heights.