My mother raised me to be a writer.

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

I'd be a conservative if I'd never met any. They're selfish, mean-spirited, egocentric, reactionary, and boring.

It did not look like the work of God, but it might have represented the handicraft of a God with a joyous sense of humor, a dancing God who loved mischief as much as prayer, and playfulness as much as mischief.

Fantasy is one of the soul's brighter porcelains.

I wrote to explain my own life to myself, stories are the vessels I use to interpret the world to myself.

My attraction to story is a ceaseless current that runs through the center of me. My inexhaustible ardor for reading seems connected to my hunger for storylines that show up in both books and in the great tumbling chaos of life.