Stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it.

I am teaching. Storytelling is teaching

Sit and quiet yourself. Luxuriate in a certain memory and the details will come. Let the images flow. You'll be amazed at what will come out on paper. I'm still learning what it is about the past that I want to write. I don't worry about it. It will emerge. It will insist on being told.

The happy childhood is hardly worth your while.

I admire certain priests and nuns who go off on their own and do God's work on their own, who help in the ghettos, but as far as the institution of the church is concerned, I think it is despicable.

I think I settled on the title before I ever wrote the book.

I've been writing in notebooks for 40 years or so.