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

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

All good writers speak in honest voices and tell the truth.

Dialogue has to show not only something about the speaker that is its own revelation, but also maybe something about the speaker that he doesn't know but the other character does know.

Fiction shows us the past as well as the present moment in mortal light; it is an art served by the indelibility of our memory, and one empowered by a sharp and prophetic awareness of what is ephemeral. It is by the ephemeral that our feeling is so strongly aroused for what endures.

Radio, sewing machine, bookends, ironing board and that great big piano lamp - peace, that's what I like. Butterbean vines planted all along the front where the strings are.

One place comprehended can make us understand other places better.