The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation.

It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming of themselves like grass.

Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them.

Passion is our ground, our island - do others exist?

The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy.

When I was a child and the snow fell, my mother always rushed to the kitchen and made snow ice cream and divinity fudge-egg whites, sugar and pecans, mostly. It was a lark then and I always associate divinity fudge with snowstorms.

The challenge to writers today, I think, is not to disown any part of our heritage. Whatever our theme in writing, it is old and tried. Whatever our place, it has been visited by the stranger, it will never be new again. It is only the vision that can be new; but that is enough.