In their sympathies, children feel nearer animals than adults. They frolic with animals, caress them, share with them feelings neither has words for. Have they ever stroked any adult with the love they bestow on a cat? Hugged any grownup with the ecstasy they feel when clasping a puppy?

In my time and neighborhood (and in my soul) there was only one standard by which a woman measured success: did some man want her?

It is the loving, not the loved, woman who feels loveable.

Faithfulness to the past can be a kind of death above ground. Writing of the past is a resurrection; the past then lives in your words and you are free.

The West is color. Its colors are animal rather than vegetable, the colors of earth and sunlight and ripeness.

Each death and departure comes to us as a surprise, a sorrow never anticipated. Life is a long series of farewells; only the circumstances should surprise us.

Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely necessary.