Writers and travelers are mesmerized alike by knowing of their destinations.

I am a writer who came from a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.

Any room in our house at any time in the day was there to read in or to be read to.

I'm a great reader that never has time to read.

Our Victrola stood in the diningroom. I was allowed to climb onto the seat of a diningroom chair to wind it, start the record turning, and set the needle playing. In a second I'd jumped to the floor, to spin or march around the room as the music called for - now there were all the other records I could play too. I skinned back onto the chair just in time to lift the needle at the end, stop the record and turn it over, then change the needle. Winding up, dancing, being cocked to start and stop the record, was of course, all in one the act of listening. Movement must be at the very heart of listening.

A whole tree of lightning stood in the sky. She kept looking out the window, suffused with the warmth from the fire and with the pity and beauty and power of her death. The thunder rolled.