I was born and raised in Ohio. During my childhood, I spent most of my time drawing and reading fairy tales and myths.
I have a wonderful husband, and we have had a great life.
Facts are the barren branches on which we hang the dear, obscuring foliage of our dreams.
But dying’s part of the wheel, right there next to being born. You can’t pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Being part of the whole thing, that’s the blessing.
The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.
The ownership of land is an odd thing when you come to think of it. How deep, after all, can it go? If a person owns a piece of land, does he own it all the way down, in ever narrowing dimensions, till it meets all other pieces at the center of the earth? Or does ownership consist only of a thin crust under which the friendly worms have never heard of trespassing?
No connection, you would agree. But things can come together in strange ways. The wood was at the center, the hub of the wheel. All wheels must have a hub. A ferris wheel has one, as the sun is the hub of the wheeling calendar. Fixed points they are, and best left undisturbed, for without them, nothing holds together. But sometimes people find this out too late.
Closing the gate on her oldest fears as she had closed the gate of her own fenced yard, she discovered the wings she’d always wished she had.
You really have to love words if you’re going to be a writer, because as a writer, you certainly spend a lot of time with words.
Outside, the night seemed poised on tiptoe, waiting, waiting, holding its breath for the storm.
What is your suggestion for someone who wants to start writing? Be a reader. It’s the only real way to learn how to tell a story.
The sky was a ragged blaze of red and pink and orange, and its double trembled on the surface of the pond like color spilled from a paintbox.
Winnie did not believe in fairy tales. She had never longed for a magic wand, did not expect to marry a prince, and was scornful – most of the time – of her grandmother’s elves. So now she sat, mouth open, wide-eyed, not knowing what to make of this extraordinary story. It couldn’t – not a bit of it – be true. And yet:.
Pretty’ doesn’t mean ‘good,’ you know, Geneva. Real life isn’t like fairy tales. ‘Pretty’ simply means that by accident you’ve got things arranged on your outside in an extra-pleasing manner. It doesn’t tell a thing about your inside.
I got a feeling this whole thing is going to come apart like wet bread.
You can’t have living without dying.
You Don’t have to live forever you just have to live.
For the wood was full of light, entirely different from the light she was used to. It was green and amber and alive, quivering in splotches on the padded ground, fanning into sturdy stripes between the tree trunks. There were little flowers she did not recognize, white and palest blue; and endless, tangled vines; and here and there a fallen log, half rotted but soft with patches of sweet green-velvet moss.
I can’t help what I dream.
She was able to believe in this because she needed to; and, believing, was her own true, promising friend once more.