Houses, like faces, hide all kinds of memories.
The writer's first affinity is not to a loyalty, a tradition, a morality, a religion, but to life itself, and to its representation in language.
Literature can teach us how to live before we live, and how to die before we die. I believe that writing is practice for death, and for every (other) transformation human beings encounter.
Towns change; they grow or diminish, but hometowns remain as we left them.
If death is this brilliant slide, this high, fine music felt as pure vibration, this plunging float in wind and silence, it's not so bad.
If all stories are fiction, fiction can be true -- not in detail or fact, but in some transformed version of feeling. If there is a memory of paradise, paradise can exist, in some other place or country dimensionally reminiscent of our own. The sad stories live there too, but in that country, we know what they mean and why they happened. We make our way back from them, finding the way through a bountiful wilderness we begin to understand. Years are nothing: Story conquers all distance.
I write line by line, by the sound and the weight and the music of the words.
The most delightful surprise in life is to suddenly recognise your own worth.
Two ideas militate against our consciously contributing to a better world. The idea that we can do everything or the conclusion that we can do nothing to make this globe a better place to live are both temptations of the most insidious form. One leads to arrogance; the other to despair.
I really believe, in my heart and soul, that if we would rebuild and strengthen the family structure in the country, you'd start to really deal with a number of the most difficult problems we're having in the country today, in poverty, education, and in crime, but we've broken the family structure up.
I am a strong believer in kissing being very intimate, and the minute you kiss, the floodgates open for everything else.