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.

If I had only a negative side of things to present, I think I would have much less of a drive to do it. Because what would be the point?

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

One of the earliest lessons I learned as a child was that if you looked away from something, it might not be there when you looked back.

Hell, I'm going to play pro basketball. I'm going to maybe be famous. I'm going to write books.

I don't write books because I have answers. I write books because I have questions. What we are is the questions that we ask, not the answers that we provide. It's all about the process of self-examination. I think that's what the best writing always contains.

My mother loved my father. From my view, she let him get away with too much. It broke my heart to see him in an old people's home and stop being strong and lose his voice.