Crying wasn't like riding a bike. Give it up, and you quickly forget how it's done.

Ironically, now that my children are older and gone quite a bit, I find it harder to work when they're not around. Too much free time!

I read everything of Ray Bradbury when I was 12 or 13, and I think that's the most effective time to read Bradbury. He built such a moral world, where you have to make decisions and grow up.

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.

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

Some things, when they change, never do return to the way they once were. Butterflies for instance, and women who've been in love with the wrong man too often.

Being human means losing everything we love best in the world," she murmured as she released me. "But would you ask to be anything else?