“This is important to writing. . . that is, it is important to my own writing. This. . . is landscape! Mine. This dirt came from the prairie where I was a child. I played in it, dug in it, planted in it, and walked over it. It is where I began. And all my writing begins with a landscape such as this. A place.”

“I wiped my hands on my apron and went to the window. Outside, the prairie reached out and touched the places where the sky came down. Though the winter was nearly over, there were patches of snow and ice everywhere. I looked at the long dirt road that crawled across the plains, remembering the morning that Mama had died, cruel and sunny. They had come for her in a wagon and taken her away to be buried. And then the cousins and aunts and uncles had come and tried to fill up the house. But they couldn’t.”

“In MoonlightNoSoft sweet paw on my cheekNoFur curled under my chinJustA sad space left behind - Gray cat gone away. [Ellie's poem]”

“Poets and children," said Sylvan. "We are the same really. When you can't find a poet, find a child. Remember that.”

“Dogs speak words, but only poets and children Hear.”

“Where else," I will say, "does an old turtle crossing the path Make all the difference in the world?”

“This is important to writing. . . that is, it is important to my own writing. This. . . is landscape! Mine. This dirt came from the prairie where I was a child. I played in it, dug in it, planted in it, and walked over it. It is where I began. And all my writing begins with a landscape such as this. A place.”

“My brother William is a fisherman, and he tells me that when he is in the middle of a fogboundsea the water is a color for which there is no name.”

“Some words may make you happy, some may make you said. Maybe some will make you angry. What I hope. . . what I hope is that something will whisper in your ear.”

“Fact and fiction are different truths.”