The painful things seemed like knots on a beautiful necklace, necessary for keeping the beads in place.

I like the way he danced. And then I like the way we danced together.

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.

The more I do bookstores, the more people come up to me from church groups. I spoke at Pittsburg State College and had 2 or 3 ministers and book groups from a couple of churches.

One of my great secrets was knowing I had the power to make her smile.

It's a wonder that any mother ever called a daughter Dinah again. But some did. Maybe you guessed that there was more to me than the voiceless cipher in the text. Maybe you heard it in the music of my name: the first vowel high and clear, as when a mother calls to her child at dusk; the second sound soft, for whispering secrets on pillows. Dee-nah.