Plots are ... what the writer sees with.

I had to grow up and learn to listen for the unspoken as well as the spoken-and to know a truth.

Learning stamps you with its moments. Childhood's learning is made up of moments. It isn't steady. It's a pulse.

The mystery lies in the use of language to express human life.

Write about what you don't know about what you know.

Ah, I'm a woman that's been clear around the world in my rocking chair, and I tell you we all get surprises now and then.

It's the form it takes when it comes out the other side, of course, that gives a story something unique--its life. The story, in the way it has arrived at what it is on the page, has been something learned, by dint of the story's challenge and the work that rises to meet it--a process as uncharted for the writer as if it had never been attempted before.