Numbers, time, inches, feet. All are just ploys for cutting nature down to size.

You know, some people fall right through the hole in their lives. Its invisible, but they come to it after time, never knowing where.

Being a girl didn't really affect me until I entered junior high and had to wear skirts, curl my hair, and even get used to panty hose. However, my hatred of panty hose helped make me a writer who only wears comfortable clothes. I've successfully avoided panty hose for most of my life.

i want to hear what's happened to you," she said evenly after a while. she gestured in the direction, down river, of the butcher shop. "it's just that there is nowhere else to start," she said gently. "niether of us is the same. but i'm different because of small, good, manageable things. you're different because ... things i don't know.

[On her and husband Michael Dorris:] We both have title collections. I think a title is like a magnet. It begins to draw these scraps of experience or conversation or memory to it. Eventually, it collects a book.

I stood there in the shadowed doorway thinking with my tears. Yes, tears can be thoughts, why not?

The contents of a house can trigger all sorts of revisions to family history.