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

Southerners love a good tale. They are born reciters, great memory retainers, diary keepers, letter exchangers . . . great talkers.

Beware of a man with manners.

Reading Chekhov was just like the angels singing to me.

Fantasy is no good unless the seed it springs from is a truth, a truth about human beings.

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

Insight doesn't happen often on the click of the moment, like a lucky snapshot, but comes in its own time and more slowly and from nowhere but within.