The life we all live is amateurish and accidental; it begins in accident and proceeds by trial and error toward dubious ends.

Touch. It is touch that is the deadliest enemy of chastity, loyalty, monogamy, gentility with its codes and conventions and restraints. By touch we are betrayed and betray others ... an accidental brushing of shoulders or touching of hands ... hands laid on shoulders in a gesture of comfort that lies like a thief, that takes, not gives, that wants, not offers, that awakes, not pacifies. When one flesh is waiting, there is electricity in the merest contact.

Creation is a knack which is empowered by practice, and like almost any skill, it is lost if you don't practice it.

I am impressed by how much of my grandparent's life depended on continuities, contacts, connections, friendships, and blood relationships.

Hope was always out ahead of fact, possibility obscured the outlines of reality.

Homesickness is a great teacher. It taught me, during an endless rainy fall, that I came from the arid lands, and like where I came from. I was used to dry clarity and sharpness in the air. I was used to horizons that either lifted into jagged ranges or rimmed the geometrical circle of the flat world. I was used to seeing a long way. I was used to earth colors--tan, rusty red, toned white--and the endless green of Iowa offended me. I was used to a sun that came up over mountains and went down behind other mountains. I missed the color and smell of sagebrush, and the sight of bare ground.

Are you a reader? If you aren't a reader, you might as well forget trying to be a writer.