The Reading Room

“I don't want to because boys don't write poetry. Girls do.”

“I especially love all the instruments of art: inks, pens, paintbrushes, watercolors and oils, fine papers and canvases, and although I love to mess around with these tools and objects, I have minimal artistic skills.”

“I tried. Can't do it. Brain's empty.”

“I entered a poem in a poetry contest around 1987, and the poem won and I received $1,000 for it. That made me realize that maybe what I was writing was worth reading to people. After that, for some reason, I turned to novels and I've written mainly novels ever since.”

“I once fell 20 feet from a tree, was knocked unconscious, and when I picked myself up and straggled home, my parents thought I was making it up. However, when my brother and I fabricated a story about an encounter with a bear, they believed that! So maybe I learned very early on that fiction was more interesting to listeners!”

“So much depends upon a blue car splattered with mud speeding down the road.”

“Sometimes you know in your heart you love someone, but you have to go away before your head can figure it out.”

“I don't remember titles of books or authors from when I was young. I remember the title of only one book, which was 'The Timber Toes.' I remember it was a family of little wooden people who lived in the woods, and for some reason that stayed with me.”

“I prayed to trees. This was easier than praying directly to God. There was nearly always a tree nearby.”

“I love the way that each book—any book—is its own journey. You open it, and off you go….”