For the writer, there is nothing quite like having someone say that he or she understands, that you have reached them and affected them with what you have written. It is the feeling early humans must have experienced when the firelight first overcame the darkness of the cave. It is the communal cooking pot, the Street, all over again. It is our need to know we are not alone.

The meaning of the Street in all ways and at all times is the need for sharing life with others and the search for community.

I can’t explain how it is I keep having new ideas. But one book inevitably follows another. It is my way of exploring the known, the remembered, and the imagined, the literary triad of which all stories are made.

To leave a place, you'd best leave everything behind; all your possessions, including memory. Traveling's not as easy as it's made out to be.

Libraries never let us forget who we are, for their worth stands by the knowledge they keep and save for us.

The past moves me and with me, although I remove myself from it. Its light often shines on this night traveler: and when it does, I scribble it down. Whatever pleasure is in it I need pass on. That's happiness. That is who I am.

The books from which [children] learn must reflect movement and change and all of the infinite possibilities of minds at liberty.