To imagine yourself inside another person...is what a story writer does in every piece of work; it is his first step, and his last too, I suppose.

When they turned off, it was still early in the pink and green fields. The fumes of morning, sweet and bitter, sprang up where they walked. The insects ticked softly, their strength in reserve; butterflies chopped the air, going to the east, and the birds flew carelessly and sang by fits and starts, not the way they did in the evening in sustained and drowsy songs.

I believe the alphabet is no longer considered an essential piece of equipment for traveling through life. In my day it was the keystone to knowledge. You learned the alphabet as you learned to count to ten, as you learned "Now I lay me" and the Lord's Prayer and your father's and mother's name and address and telephone number, all in case you were lost.

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

Through travel I first became aware of the outside world; it was through travel that I found my own introspective way into becoming a part of it.

Gardening is akin to writing stories. No experience could have taught me more about grief or flowers, about achieving survival by going, your fingers in the ground, the limit of physical exhaustion.

Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.