We read so that we can be moved by a new way of looking at things.

You can't shape me anymore. I am the uncontrolled element, the random act. I am forward movement in time. You think you can see me? Then tell me, who am I? You don't know.

How easy I was. Like a limpet I attached myself to anything, anyone who showed me the least attention.

One can bear anything. The pain we cannot bear will kill us outright.

These people picked you up and played with you and then left you lying in the rain

The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shriveling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw. Only the oleanders thrived, their delicate poisonous blooms, their dagger green leaves. We could not sleep in the hot dry nights, my mother and I.

I tried writing fiction as a little kid, but had a teacher humiliate me, so didn't write again until I was a senior in college.