Eavesdrop and write it down from memory - gives you a stronger sense of how people talk and what their concerns are. I love to eavesdrop!

How will you know a good farmer when you meet him? He will not ask you for any favors.

I loved the house the way you would any new house, because it is populated by your future, the family of children who will fill it with noise or chaos and satisfying busy pleasures.

The fact is that the same sequence of days can arrange themselves into a number of different stories.

I had spent years thinking about one thing while I was doing another. I had, in fact, prided myself on being able to do two things at once.

Fascination with horses predated every other single thing I knew. Before I was a mother, before I was a writer, before I knew the facts of life, before I was a schoolgirl, before I learned to read, I wanted a horse.

The one thing ... maybe no family could tolerate was things coming out into the open.