Add there was that moment when my mother and father walked in the door disguised as old people. I thought the miles in the car had bent them, dulled their eyes, even grayed and whitened their hair and caused their hands and voices to tremble. At the same time, I found, as I rose form the chair, I'd gotten old along with them.

I am at the bookstore a lot, but let my friends, the professional Birchbark Books staff, handle the day in and day out.

I did not choose solitude. Who would? It came on me like a kind of vocation, demanding an effort that married women can't picture.

It is easy to take away the world that we think is so permanent and reliable.

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

What men call adventures usually consist of the stoical endurance of appalling daily misery.

I might not be able to use the word "hope," but I could certainly use the word "optimism." I'm very optimistic. I don't feel that it helps to be pessimistic. At some point in my life I made a conscious decision that I would try to be optimistic - not blind to anything at all - but to always hear the way that had the best chance for happiness.