To be of mixed blood is a great gift for a writer. I have one foot on tribal lands and one foot in middle-class life.

We are never so poor that we cannot bless another human being, are we? So it is that every evil, whether moral or material, results in good. You'll see.

The story comes around, pushing at our brains, and soon we are trying to ravel back to the beginning, trying to put families into order and make sense of things. But we start with one person, and soon another and another follows, and still another, until we are lost in the connections.

Here I am, where I ought to be. A writer must have a place where he or she feels this, the place to love and be irritated with.

I had a very free childhood and ranged around on my bicycle the way boys do. I had few restrictions.

I was in love with the whole world and all that lived in its rainy arms.

There are people who are always, I think, going to remain people of the book, to use another author's title, but people of the book, who really must be around.