“I will plant my feet on that step where my parents put me as a child, until self-evident truth comes to light.”

“Riddle me this - she is my daughter but I am not her father: who am I?I am a step parent. Ah, but I don't really believe in the term step-parent. I don't think the role exists. Not really. For either in the end you are either a child's parent or you are not. And blood does not have a lot do to with it.”

“The pain was a river I rode; I could not plant my feet in it or it would knock me down”

“I am ashamed to say this, but as a child, neither my parents not my teachers pushed me to read. In fact, I did not read an entire book through until I was a grown man and had learned the awesome power of reading on my own.”

“I don't think my parents liked me. They put a live teddy bear in my crib.”

“This is important to writing. . . that is, it is important to my own writing. This. . . is landscape! Mine. This dirt came from the prairie where I was a child. I played in it, dug in it, planted in it, and walked over it. It is where I began. And all my writing begins with a landscape such as this. A place.”