From Ernest Hemingway's stories I learned to listen within my stories for what went unsaid by my characters.

A desert is a place without expectation.

The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.

A truly living human being cannot remain neutral.

The caged eagle become a metaphor for all forms of isolation, the ultimate in imprisonment. A zoo is prison.

Peace. The upland serenity of high altitude, the openness of grassland without indigenous bush or trees; the greening, yellowing or silver-browning that prevailed, according to season.

Writing is making sense of life.

Perhaps the best definition of progress would be the continuing efforts of men and women to narrow the gap between the convenience of the powers that be and the unwritten charter.

I have failed at many things, but I have never been afraid.

Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area.

Time is change; we measure its passage by how much things alter.

Our memories are what make us who we are. Some are real. Some are made up. But they are the stories that tell us who we are. Without them we are nobody.

Is my life, by any chance, about to take a new turn?

We are destined for joy no matter how difficult our daily life. Something in us responds to the happiness other people experience, because we glimpse life as God intended it to be.

My father was a member of the Teamsters Union in California, where he helped to organize better health care for workers. My mother worked for more than 20 years on an assembly line.

Round the boles of the pine-wood the ground-laurel creeps, Unkissed of the sunshine, unbaptized of showers, With buds scarcely swelled, which should burst into flowers!

LSU would be a good place to stand during a lightning storm.

I think it's an essential fact for any performer or artist to fail as poignantly as they can succeed.

Maybe people are more like the earth than we know. Maybe they have fault lines that sooner or later are going to split open under pressure.

I knew that my father was going to die of heart disease, and I was trying to make a heart for him.

I love the HRC. The initials are great.