Kids use words in ways that release hidden meanings, revel the history buried in sounds. They haven't forgotten that words can be more than signs, that words have magic, the power to be things, to point to themselves and materialize. With their back-formations, archaisms, their tendency to play the music in words--rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, repetition--children peel the skin from language. Words become incantatory. Open Sesame. Abracadabra. Perhaps a child will remember the word and will bring the walls tumbling down.

I want to give the evidence in a way that is convincing, but I don't want to cheat.

I believe - what did Faulkner say? "The past is not even past."

We're dreamers and - since we only have one life, and if we screw up we can get in a world of trouble - we're very intense dreamers.

I really love James Joyce, Dubliners and other work. And I was interested in the way the dash was used in English topography - in his work particularly - and I realized there was no compulsion to use those ugly dot-dot curlicues all over the place to designate dialogue. I began to look around, and found writers who could make transitions quite clear by the language itself. I'm a bit of a maverick now. I'm always trying to push the medium.

I don't tell everything. I want the reader to have the feeling that maybe they know the whole truth, but they don't.

I'm still vulnerable and still weak.