We don't write what we know. We write what we wonder about.

That meant I could come back whenever I could manage it. And she was telling me to go. She knew the decision was too big a load for me to carry by myself. She knew me through and through. She had eyes in the back of her heart.

If you cannot find yourself on the page very early in life, you will go looking for yourself in all the wrong places.

Grandma, how old is she?" "Oh I don't know." Grandma said. "You'd have to cut off her head and count the rings in her neck.

The years went by, and Mary Alice and I grew up, Slower than we wanted to, faster than we realized.

...they'd just tell you to turn the other cheek, wouldn't they?...Trouble is, Mrs. Dowdel observed, after you've turned the other cheek four times, you run out of cheeks.

I read because one of these days I'm going to get out of this town, and I'm going to go everywhere and meet everybody, and I want to be ready