A real diamond is never perfect.

WWII is something contemporary readers already know a lot about. If our schools are doing their jobs, they know about the invasion of Normandy, the Hitler Youth, the Holocaust, and at least a few of the horrors of the Eastern Front.

Only Numbers. Pure math. You have to accustom yourself to thinking that way.

So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?

It took me about three years to write About Grace. I wasn't teaching two of those years, so I was working eight-hour days, five days a week. And it would include research and reading - it wasn't just a blank page, laying down words.

I guess whatever maturity is there may be there because I've been keeping a journal forever. In high school my friends would make fun of me - you're doing your man diary again. So I was always trying to translate experience into words.

You bury your childhood here and there. It waits for you, all your life, to come back and dig it up.