The urge to travel feels magnetic. Two of my favorite words are linked: departure time. And travel whets the emotions, turns upside down the memory bank, and the golden coins scatter.

Life offers you a thousand chances... all you have to do is take one.

There is no technique, there is just the way to do it. Now, are we going to measure or are we going to cook?

It’s daunting to find the language so foreign, so distant, but also so thrilling. One is absolved of responsibility when the language is incomprehensible.

Five tender apricots in a blue bowl, a brief and exact promise of things to come.

A Chinese poet many centuries ago noticed that to re-create something in words is like being alive twice.

I had the urge to examine my life in another culture and move beyond what I knew.

Any arbitrary turning along the way and I would be elsewhere; I would be different.

If you've got a plot the size of a car or a tiny yard in Italy, you're going to be growing tomatoes and basil and celery and carrots, and everybody is still connected to the land.

Where is it written that houses must be beige? Any dun colored house would look better if painted pineapple, cream, ochre, or even a smart sage.

Sometimes the valley below is like a bowl filled up with fog. I can see hard green figs on two trees and pears on a tree just below me. A fine crop coming in. May summer last a hundred years.

We are nothing but shadows Fading away Trying to hold on to This bittersweet life That we call our own...

Love invites the Holy Ghost to be present to confirm truth. And the joy of learning divine truths creates love in the hearts of people who shared the experience of learning.

When you create art, the world has to wait.

The thing you realize pretty quickly, though, is that being in front of an audience whose job it is to laugh is a big pressure if the writing is not hilarious.

Time was not passing...it was turning in a circle.

Payne nailing him in the face woke him up. George brought him back his independence. But Beth handed him his crown.

Most Young Kings Get Their Heads Cut Off.

Every writer needs an editor. I don't care how good you are or think you are.

Gold--the picklock that never fails.

I was sure you 'd dropped the class, which made me selfishly ecstatic. Without even knowing i was doing it, i started looking for you on campus.