“Just go on reading, as well as you can, and be sure that when the children get the thrill of the story, for which you wait, they will be asking more questions, and pertinent ones, than you are able to answer.”

“The older you get, the more questions you get asked, and the more weary you become of answering the questions and the more elusive the answers--any answer, every answer--seem. --Maureen O'Toople in the short story "Your Question for Author Here”

“So what were you doing there?”  Here’s the frustrating thing about Nate, one of those things that happy memories conveniently glossed over.  A lot of times, you had to ask him a question more than once to get a straight answer.  He loved to answer questions you’d never asked, or to answer a question with another question.   “Do I really have to answer that, Kyrie?” See? “Don’t you trust me?”  See?!”

“I ask people impertinent questions. Hopefully turning up pertinent answers.”

“You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells a story, let's say, and afterward you ask, 'Is it true?' and if the answer matters, you've got your answer . . . Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.”

“All children mythologise their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won’t be the truth: it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story.”