And I am all the things I have ever loved: scuppernong wine, cool baptisms in silent water, dream books and number playing.

In Ohio seasons are theatrical. Each one enters like a prima donna, convinced its performance is the reason the world has people in it.

In Tar Baby, the classic concept of the individual with a solid, coherent identity is eschewed for a model of identity which sees the individual as a kaleidoscope of heterogeneous impulses and desires, constructed from multiple forms of interaction with the world as a play of difference that cannot be completely comprehended.

I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it.

How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it.

To get to a place where you could love anything you chose--not to need permission for desire--well now _that_ was freedom.

Lay my head on the railroad line. Train come along; pacify my mind.