If you sweep a house, and tend its fires and fill its stove, and there is love in you all the years you are doing this, then you and that house are married, that house is yours.

I was eleven, then I was sixteen. Though no honors came my way, those were the lovely years.

I'll wager at the end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are -- her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie pawing earth over her bone - just what they've always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes.

I loved her enough to forget myself, my self pitying despairs, and be content that something she thought happy was going to happen.

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music that words make.

There is really no practical help that one can offer: it is a matter of self-discovery, of one's own conviction, or working with one's own work; your style is what seems natural to you. It is a long process of discovery, one that never ends. I am working at it, and will be as long as I live.

A beautiful day with the buoyancy of a bird.