It takes a year, nephew... a full turn of the calendar, to get over losing someone.

Wonderful ... I was up all night reading it, laughing and crying out in horror.

Everybody that went away suffered a broken heart. "I'm coming back some day," they all wrote. But never did. The old life was too small to fit anymore.

You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.

Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.

In a rough way the short story writer is to the novelist as a cabinetmaker is to a house carpenter.

Walking on the land or digging in the fine soil I am intensely aware that time quivers slightly, changes occurring in imperceptible and minute ways, accumulating so subtly that they seem not to exist. Yet the tiny shifts in everything--cell replication, the rain of dust motes, lengthening hair, wind-pushed rocks--press inexorably on and on.