The wind makes you ache is some place that is deeper than your bones. It may be that it touches something old in the human soul, a chord of race memory that says Migrate or die - migrate or die.

and the rain went rollin down the windowpanes, and the shadows wiggled n' squiggled on her check and forehead like black veins.

When you own a piano, it's harder to think about moving.

I am always chilled and astonished by the would-be writers who ask me for advice and admit, quite blithely, that they "don't have time to read." This is like a guy starting up Mount Everest saying that he didn't have time to buy any rope or pitons.

Say what you mean. Say what you see. Make a photograph, if you can, for the reader.

Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.

Teaching school is like having jumper cables hooked to your brain, draining all the juice out of you.