Honey, Maggie Jones said. Victoria. Listen to me. You're here now. This is where you are.

I wake each day and try to see what I might do that is of some value and joy. It's a strange life. I don't know how long it'll go on. I don't look past tomorrow. Anything beyond tomorrow seems like hearsay. Or fairy tales.

My desire is to be anonymous, isolated, quiet, peaceful, and concentrated.

You have to believe in yourself despite the evidence.

Here was this man Tom Guthrie in Holt standing at the back window in the kitchen of his house smoking cigarettes and looking out over the back lot where the sun was just coming up.

It seems to me nothing man has done or built on this land is an improvement over what was here before.

I began writing seriously in my mid-20s and didnt publish my first book until I was 41.