Because if you weren't born white, you were forced to see differences; or if you weren't born what they called normal, or if you got injured, then you were left to explore the world of the different.

Writing cant change the world overnight, but writing may have an enormous effect over time, over the long haul.

But as long as you remember what you have seen, then nothing is gone. As long as you remember, it is part of this story we have together.

The only way to get change is not through the courts or - heaven forbid - the politicians, but through a change of human consciousness and through a change of heart. Only through the arts - music, poetry, dance, painting, writing - "can we really reach each other.

Things which don't shift and grow are dead things.

I will tell you something about stories . . . They aren't just entertainment. Don't be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death.

The story was the important thing and little changes here and there were really part of the story. There were even stories about the different versions of stories and how they imagined the differing versions came to be.