I was brought up in a community, in a family that valued such things as good manners, and I still do.

No touching Baby Jesus.” “But we’re his parents!” proclaimed Mary Beth, who was being generous to include poor Joseph under this appellation. “Mary Beth,” Barb Wiggin said, “if you touch the Baby Jesus, I’m putting you in a cow costume.

I have a friend who says that reviewers are the tickbirds of the literary rhinoceros-but he is being kind. Tickbirds perform a valuable service to the rhino and the rhino hardly notices the birds.

Half my life is an act of revision; more than half the act is performed with small changes.

…there is no nakedness that compares to being naked in front of someone for the first time.

A sentence boiled in her, but she could not yet see it clearly.

Most places we leave in childhood grow less, not more, fancy.