If you're standing in the manure pile, it's somebody's job to mention the stink.

I live in a rural part of Virginia surrounded by farms and farmers.

she's never forgotten, either, how a mystery caught in the hand could lose its grace

The daily work - that goes on, it adds up.

We're surrounded by mandates, and I believe that literature should be mandate-free. I feel very strongly about that.

What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in & out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?

I have seen women looking at jewelry ads with a misty eye and one hand resting on the heart, and I only know what they're feeling because that's how I read the seed catalogs in January.