September 11 We thought we'd outdistanced history Told our children it was nowhere near; Even when history struck Columbine, It didn't happen here. We took down the maps in the classroom, And when they were safely furled, We told the young what they wanted to hear, That they were immune from a menacing world. But history isn't a folded-up map, Or an unread textbook tome; Now we know history's a fireman's child Waiting at home alone.

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

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

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

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

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.