To open up the new, to look back on the old may bring forth like discoveries in the practice of art.

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

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

To write honestly and with all our powers is the least we can do, and the most.

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.

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

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.