I'm a very rooted person. I grew up in Norwich, Connecticut, I still live in Connecticut.

Human behavior in the midst of hardship caught my attention very early on, and my first stories were all pictures, no words.

A woman who surrenders her freedom need not surrender her dignity.

Look, don't just stare at the pages," I used to tell my students. "Become the characters. Live inside the book.

If you want your prayers answered, get up off your knees and do something about them.

Let me tell you something, my wife died for Tuesdays ago. Cancer of the colon. We were married forty-one years. Now you stop feeling sorry for yourself and lose some of that pork of yours. Pretty girl like you - you don't want to do this yourself.

Power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed.