My mother thought of my father as half barbarian and half blunt instrument, and she isolated him from his children.

Reading is the most rewarding form of exile and the most necessary discipline for novelists who burn with the ambition to get better.

My mother thought of my father as half barbarian and half blunt instrument, and she isolated him from his children.

I had come to a place where I was meant to be. I don't mean anything so prosaic as a sense of coming home. This was different, very different. It was like arriving at a place much safer than home.

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

Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends.

Mama always taught her children that words were pretty, but anyone can talk. She said, pay attention to that man or woman who acted, who did, who performed. She taught us to trust in thing we could see, not that we heard.