"I like the stories where the weak and the small win—and not through brute force, but through their wits and intelligence. Remember that my audience is made up of those who are weak and small."

"My first independent entry into the world of words, through reading, is associated inextricably with the cookies my mother used to bake when we were in Iowa. I acquired the written word more or less on my own; one might say I taught myself to read, although the groundwork was already laid for that grand activity upon which civilization is built. My earliest memories of toys are the alphabet blocks I played with. At the time when I discovered how to read, my parents – both writers five years out of the Iowa Writers Workshop – were finishing their Ph.D. in English in Denver, where, leery of babysitters, I tagged along to their classes under John Williams, Harold Priest, and Joe Billings."

"There can be no poetry without spirit."