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

Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists.

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

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.

Any room in our house at any time in the day was there to read in or to be read to.

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

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.