There's no word in the language I revere more than 'teacher.' My heart sings when a kid refers to me as his teacher, and it always has. I've honored myself and the entire family of man by becoming a teacher.

I could bear the memory, but I could not bear the music that made the memory such a killing thing.

My mother raised me to be a writer.

Baseball fans love numbers. They love to swirl them around their mouths like Bordeaux wine.

Happiness is an accident of nature, a beautiful and flawless aberration.

Her laughter was a shiny thing, like pewter flung high in the air.

A story is a living thing, it moves and shifts.