“Do you want the truth or fiction?”

“This, I suppose, is part of being human, learning from our losses how better to appreciate what is left in their wake.”

“You remember it your way and I'll remember it mine.”

“I don't, when I think of a city, think of these people, people with very little who are content with that. That is, I think about poverty and culture and traffic and pollution and crime...”

“If I drag it up from the bottom of the river, if I dig deep into that muddy floor and pull it up, even if I get most of it wrong, is it mine to tell?”

“There are televisions and radios and the sounds of life, but too there is the sound of death, crying and oxygen tanks, and the squeaky wheels on wheelchairs. Like life and death are in a very close...”

“And you asked why people always expected you to smile in photographs. And I told you it was because they hoped that in the future, there would be something to smile about”

“There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.”

“Tell the story that's been growing in your heart, the characters you can't keep out of your head, the tale story that speaks to you, that pops into your head during your daily commute, that wakes y...”

“I write for the kid in me. . . . Often when Im working on a story, Ill find myself laughing at something my characters have done, or even being surprised at where theyve taken the story. Its as if ...”

“If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.”