My mother used to tell me when I went somewhere, "Please leave your foolishness at home." But how could I do that? It was stuck on me.

I keep thinking, we teach children to use language to solve their disputes. We teach them not to hit and fight and bite. Then look what adults do!

Maybe when your mother died young, you became instantly old.

Facts interest me less than the trailing smoke of stories.

Today you will say things you can predict and other things you could never imagine this minute. Don't reject them, let them come through when they're ready, don't think you can plan it al out. This day will never, no matter how long you live, happen again. It is exquisitely singular. It will never again be exactly repeated.

We dropped our troubles into the lap of the storyteller, and they turned into someone else's.

Because sometimes I live in a hurricane of words and not one of them can save me.