The only way you can write is by the light of the bridges burning behind you.

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

This is how you hold onto your family. You hold them with open hands so they are free to find futures of their own. It's just that simple.

With the poetry of plain speaking, Shannon Hitchcock recreates the daily drama of a vanished world.

I read because one life isn't enough and in the pages of a book, I can be anybody.

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.

Read to your children Twenty minutes a day; You have the time, And so do they. Read while the laundry is in the machine; Read while the dinner cooks; Tuck a child in the crook of your arm And reach for the library books. Hide the remote, Let the computer games cool, For one day your children will be off to school; Remedial? Gifted? You have the choice; Let them hear their first tales In the sound of your voice. Read in the morning; Read over noon; Read by the light of Goodnight Moon. Turn the pages together, Sitting close as you'll fit, Till a small voice beside you says, "Hey, don't quit.