Now that I live in Southern California, my current world certainly speaks to me, and I sense that my next book will have a more American and southerly setting. But that's certainly not to say I won't be back to Leaford.

Write,' she said, 'as if you'll never be read. That way you'll be sure to tell the truth.

When we talk about God, I think what most of us mean is some greater thing, some higher power that can help us access our own strength or give us strength.

The strangest thing about strange things is that they're only strange when you hear about them or think about them later, but never when you're living them.

Because I live in California now, I find my musings really being centered in this world.

I feel, holding books, accommodating their weight and breathing their dust, an abiding love. I trust them, in a way that I can't trust my computer, though I couldn't do without it. Books are matter. My books matter. What would I have done through these years without the library and all its lovely books?

How cruel it must be for a man to live past his soul.