If not for sports, I do not think my father would have ever talked to me.

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

My soul found ease and rest in the companionship of books.

A library could show you everything if you knew where to look.

Even today, I hunt for the fabulous books that will change me utterly. I find myself happiest in the middle of a book which I forget that I am reading, but am instead immersed in a made-up life lived at the highest pitch.

We children sat transfixed before that moon our mother had called forth from the waters. When the moon had reached its deepest silver, my sister, Savannah, though only three, cried aloud to our mother, to Luke and me, to the river and the moon, "Oh, Mama, do it again!" And I had my earliest memory.

My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.