A Dream Without A Plan Is Just

A Novel Is Not Born Of A Single Idea. The Stories I've Tried To Write From One Idea, No Matter How Terrific An Idea, Have Sputtered Out And Died By Chapter Three. For Me, Novels Have Invariably Come From A Complex Of Ideas That In The Beginning Seemed To Bear No Relation To Each Other, But In The Unconscious Began Mysteriously To Merge And Grow. Ideas For A Novel Are Like The Strong Guy Lines Of A Spider Web. Without Them The Silken Web Cannot Be Spun.

On Decoration Day, While Everyone Else In Town Was At The Cemetery Decorating The Graves Of Our Glorious War Dead, Willie Beaner And Me, Robert Burns Hewitt, Took Mabel Cramm's Bloomers And Run Them Up The Flagpole In Front Of The Town Hall. That Was The Beginning Of All My Troubles.

When My Husband Died, People Kept Telling Me Not To Cry. People Kept Trying To Help Me To Forget. But I Didn't Want To Forget. [...] So I Realize, That If It's Hard For Me, How Much Harder It Must Be For You.

Teachers Have Almost Stopped Reading Aloud To Their Classes Because Of The Pressure Of Testing And Tight Curricula, But It Is The Books We Read Together And Talk About Together That Bring Us Closer Together.

I Realize, Of Course, That I Wasn't Born Knowing How To Read. I Just Can't Imagine A Time When I Didn't Know How.