Place is character. And all writing is regional.

With each draft, the work gets better, and usually that means tighter. It means getting the precise word, not the approximate word.

There were the fairy tales my father told to me at bedtime. All the standards. I thought my father invented wolves.

I used to believe that love and happiness were synonymous. I was a fool. Love intensifies all emotions. Nothing is so painful o so sweet, so thrilling or so desperate... Pleasure is, after all, a luxury. It's love thats essential. You are never so alive as when you love, never so alert, intuitive, attentive, never so smart or so compassionate.

I was reading for understanding. I wanted to do to a reader what Salinger did for me.

The universe may be tenderly indifferent to our fate, but we shouldn’t be. We are our brothers’ keepers. There is right, and there is wrong. There are consequences to our actions or inactions. Disregard can be an act of violence.

It's easier to write about a place sometimes when you've left it, when you can apply your imagination to your memory and let your emotions guide the writing about a place.