Daydreaming had started me on the way; but story writing once I was truly in its grip, took me and shook me awake.

Time is anonymous; when we give it a face, it's the same face the world over.

Learning stamps you with its moments. Childhood's learning is made up of moments. It isn't steady. It's a pulse.

I read library books as fast as I could go, rushing them home in the basket of my bicycle. From the minute I reached our house, I started to read. Every book I seized on, from “Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-a-While” to “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” stood for the devouring wish to read being instantly granted. I knew this was bliss, knew it at the time. Taste isn’t nearly so important; it comes in its own time.

it doesn t matter if it takes a long time getting there; the point is to have a destination.

Never think you've seen the last of anything.

Great fiction shows us not how to conduct our behavior but how to feel. Eventually, it may show us how to face our feelings and face our actions and to have new inklings about what they mean. A good novel of any year can initiate us into our own new experience.