Now the baby boomers, i.e., us, are getting older, and were suddenly discovering that there are great things about getting older. You have time for your friendships and you appreciate them in ways that you didn't before.

By the time you kill and mount what you catch, it has lost that very thing that made it worth having. I knew this only as a vague sense of disappointment at age 10; not until later did I recognize it as a metaphor for much of life.

I do tend to be almost kind of Pollyanna-ish person.

The voices of conformity speak so loudly. Don't listen to them. No one does the right thing out of fear. If you ever utter the words, 'We've always done it that way,' I urge you to wash out your mouth with soap.

I did not read from a sense of superiority, or advancement, or even learning. I read because I loved it more than any other activity on earth.

I think I'm like most novelists in that my books have gotten farther and farther away from autobiography the longer I've been writing them.

Figuring out who you are is the whole point of the human experience.