“Well,' the Goddess said, 'your heart didn't heal straight the last time it broke. So we'll break it again and reset it so it heals straight this time.”

“Time may heal all wounds, but it does not erase the scars.”

“JANE: What to do when it is that time in your girl child's life:1. Sit down calmly and explain sex to her?2. Buy her a book, video, or CD that gives her the details?3. Buy her condoms and put her on the pill?Or do as many mothers before you did—just stick your head in the sand and hope she joins a convent.Of course these days your child may know more about sex than you did at her age, what with in-school health lessons, and out-of-school R-rated movies easily accessed on the TV, not to mention the Starr Report!In the days of fairy tales, sex was dangerous because so many women died in childbirth. Today sex is again dangerous because of diseases like AIDS. So what do we say?”

“What makes a good book? Scholars and critics have been debating that question for decades. I like books that touch my head and my heart at the same time.”

“A mist still lay all about the walls and floors, hovering like a last breath on the lips of all the sleepers. As he walked through the castle, he marveled at how many lay asleep: the good people, the not-so-good, the young people and the not-so-young, and not one of them stirring. Not one.”

“In fiction, the characters have their own lives. They may start as a gloss on the author’s life, but they move on from there. In poetry, especially confessional poetry but in other poetry as well, the poet is not writing characters so much as emotional truth wrapped in metaphor. Bam! Pow! A shot to the gut.”

“You can only chase a butterfly for so long.”