The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know.

When you know your name, you should hang on to it, for unless it is noted down and remembered, it will die when you do.

When a child walks in the room, your child or anybody else’s child, do your eyes light up? That’s what they’re looking for.

Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured

Our ancestors are an ever widening circle of hope.

All the time, I'm afraid the thing that happened that made it all right for my mother to kill my sister could happen again. I don't know what it is, I don't know who it is, but maybe there is something else terrible enough to make her do it again. I need to know what that thing might be, but I don't want to. Whatever it is, it comes from outside this house, outside the yard, and it can come right on in the yard if it wants to. So I never leave this house and I watch over the yard, so it can't happen again and my mother won't have to kill me too.

Not knowing it was hard; knowing it was harder