Perhaps the most vivid recollection of my youth is that of the local wheelmen, led by my father, stopping at our home to eat pone, sip mint juleps, and flog the field hands. This more than anything cultivated my life-long aversion to bicycles.

I don't want realism. I want magic!

Maggie, we're through with lies and liars in this house. Lock the door.

Why is it so damn hard for people to talk?

At the age of fourteen I discovered writing as an escape from a world of reality in which I felt acutely uncomfortable.

Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it... Success is shy - it won't come out while you're watching.

Openings come quickly, sometimes, like blue space in running clouds. A complete overcast, then a blaze of light.