“...writing surrounds us: it's not something we do just in school or on the job but something that is as familiar and everyday as a pair of worn sneakers or the air we breathe.”

“Literature might be called the art of story, and story might in turn be called a universal language, for every culture we know of has a tradition of storytelling. No doubt stories have touched your life, too, from bedtime stories you may have heard as a child to news stories you see on TV or read in a newspaper. We might even say that a major goal of living is to created the story of our own lives, a story we hope to take pleasure and pride in telling.”

“..one true thing among all these paths is the need to tap a deep vein of connection between our own uncontrollable interior preoccupations and what we're most concerned about in the world around us. We write in response to that world; we write in response to what we read and learn; and in the end we write out of our deepest selves, the live, breathing, bleeding place where the picture form, and where it all begins.”

“Hang on .... Do you smell that?" "Yeah ... shit," Nev snarled, glancing at the thick jungle that surrounded us. "You smell shit?" Ethan asked. "Thanks for sharing.""No," Nev said. "We smell cats.”

“We went up and up into the heavens until people were just dots below us. As we hung right at the top--the twinkling electric lights below mingling with the stars--Father said something I will never forget. He said, 'See here, Queenie. Look around. You've got the whole world at your feet, lass.”

“What do two women friends usually do when they see each other? We talked, we watched television, we listened to music Sometimes we did nothing at all. It was a pleasure just to know the other one was there.”

“We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe.”