The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.

Like all magnificent things, it's very simple.

my mother always found me out. Always. She's been dead for thirty-five years, but I have this feeling that even now she's watching.

Time is like a wheel. Turning and turning - never stopping. And the woods are the center; the hub of the wheel. It began the first week of summer, a strange and breathless time when accident, or fate, bring lives together. When people are led to do things, they've never done before. On this summersday, not so very long ago, the wheel set lives in motion in mysterious ways.

The only thing I would want to say is that storytelling is ancient; it's something that everybody does. Kids mustn't be in awe of it. Reading should be a joy - fun, fun, fun - not a responsibility, not something you do because society demands it, but something you do because it's a pleasure.

Don't be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don't have to live forever, you just have to live.

Still-there's no use trying to figure why things fall the way they do. Things just are, and fussing don't bring changes.