The ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language.

Despite our preparation, indeed, despite our age, [the death of a parent] dislodges things deep in us, sets off reactions that surprise us and may cut free memories and feelings that we thought had gone to ground long ago. We might, in that indeterminate period they call mourning, be in a submarine, silent on the ocean's bed, aware of the depth charges, now near and now far, buffeting us with recollections.

The apparent ease of California life is an illusion, and those who believe the illusion will live here in only the most temporary way.

The impulse for much writing is homesickness. You are trying to get back home, and in your writing you are invoking that home, so you are assuaging the homesickness.

I can't imagine writing if I didn't have a reader. Any more than an actor can imagine acting without an audience.

As a writer, even as a child, long before what I wrote began to be published, I developed a sense that meaning itself was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs...The way I write is who I am, or have become.

I came into adult life equipped with an essentially romantic ethic.