What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity.

The older I get, the more I appreciate my rural childhood. I spent a lot of time outdoors, unsupervised, which is a blessing.

Once the rains abated, my father's garden thrived in the heat like an unleashed temper.

Write a nonfiction book, and be prepared for the legion of readers who are going to doubt your fact. But write a novel, and get ready for the world to assume every word is true.

Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives.

A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world. But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after--oh, that' s love by a different name.

Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.