Don't worry about being worried. You're heading out on an adventure and you can always change your mind along the way and try something else.

Things were here before you and will be here after you're gone. The geographic features, especially, give you a sense of your own place in the world and in time

You can write about anything, and if you write well enough, even the reader with no intrinsic interest in the subject will become involved.

I know that to write you have to have stories you want to tell. You have to keep your mind alive, and you have to work hard.

In a very basic way, a prominent landmark such as Mt. Holyoke tells you where you are. They let you know that you're not the first person in a place

In order to go on with our lives, we are always capable of making the ominous into the merely strange.

At first, I spend about four hours a day writing. Toward the end of a book, I spend up to 16 hours a day on it, because all I want to do is make it good and get it done.