The truth came slowly like a story told by people interrupting each other..

My father brought me a box of books once when I was about three and a half or four. I remember the carton they were in and the covers with illustrati….

Literature is the province of imagination, and stories, in whatever guise, are meditations on life..

Freedom is a public library..

The density of people in society is so thick that we forget that life will end one day. And we don't know when that one-day will be. So please, tell ….

Families hold each other in an iron grip of definition. One must break the grip, somehow..

Labels not only free us from the obligation to think creatively; they numb our sensibilities, our power to feel. During the Vietnam War, the phrase b….

The minute you become conscious that you are doing good, that's the minute you have to stop because from then on it's wrong..

Life is all getting used to what you're not used to..

If a person had accused him of meanness, he could have defended himself. But with a dog - you did something cheap to it when you were sure no one was….

I have a painter's memory. I can remember things from my childhood which were so powerfully imprinted on me, the whole scene comes back..

I don't like to listen to music while I'm working..

I was the goldfish that leapt out of the bowl..

The language of labels is like paper money, issued irresponsibly, with nothing of intrinsic value behind it, that is, with no effort of the intellige….

To be human is to be in a story..

Teachers inspire the smallest hearts to grow big enough to change the world..

My first job was working in a dress shop in Los Angeles in 1940, for $7 a week..

When I begin a story at my desk, the window to my back, the path is not there. As I start to walk, I make the path..

Imagination has to do with one's awareness of the reality of other people as well as of one's own reality. Imagination is a bridge between the provin….

In my early twenties, that's when I really began to write. Before that, I was too busy working, keeping myself going..

My life was incoherent to me. I felt it quivering, spitting out broken teeth..