The other reason women wanted daughters was to keep their memories alive.

It was one of those perfect fall days when the air is cool enough to wake you up but the sun is also kissing your face.

The Bible - it's sort of the other person in the room. There's this book, the reader, and the Bible.

One of my favorite poets, Neruda, writes close to the bone. Though I know only a little Spanish, I like to compare the Spanish and English lines and see how the translator worked.

I would have stayed forever within the garden of Re-mose's childhood, but time is a mother's enemy.

I lived through a classic publishing story. My editor was fired a month before the book came out. The editor who took it over already had a full plate. It was never advertised. We didn't get reviewed in any major outlets.

There's something almost adolescent about Whitman's paean to everything that was and remains good about America.