Never think you've seen the last of anything.

What I do in the writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart and skin of a human being who is not myself. It is the act of a writer's imagination that I set the most high.

Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.

I believe in it, and I trust it too and treasure it above everything, the personal, the personal, the personal! I put my faith in it not only as the source, the ground of meaning in art, in life, but as the meaning itself.

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

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.

Writers and travelers are mesmerized alike by knowing of their destinations.