It wasn't that I was stupid ... It was just that there didn't seem to be a lot to say that someone wasn't already saying.

I am drawn to the ways in which we are shaped by people and by place.

A person isn't a bird. You can't cage a person.

I prayed to trees. This was easier than praying directly to God. There was nearly always a tree nearby.

I love the way that each book -- any book -- is its own journey. You open it, and off you go. You are changed in some way, large or small, by having traveled with those characters.

The sea, the sea, the sea. It rolled and rolled and called to me. Come in, it said, come in.

Young children are naturally so philosophical. They ask: 'What is real? What is truth?' They have to learn it; they don't automatically know it. To them, it's a game. You can study this for years in college, and yet you probably asked it when you were four or five years old.