You don't know what you need when you're a young writer. You can get small slivers of critical input, advice, comments, but if you're deep in the perplexity of your own process, as you should be, sorting it out in your own way, nothing is going to guide you more than small gestures of encouragement.

I think that those moments before a performer plays are the moments when the potential for something to be created may - or may not - arrive.

A few days after 9/11, I put the old cassette of 'Born in the U.S.A.,' twisted and worn, on the car deck as I drove past West Point, across the Bear Mountain Bridge, along the Hudson River. It was the perfect moment to hear it.

A kiss is often about the future and the past. A lost dream, about the discretion of the idealism.

There are evils that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever... money, for instance, or war.

The Lord has done what I wanted Him to do this week. I wanted, primarily, peace about going into pioneer Indian work. And as I analyze my feelings now, I feel quite at ease about saying that tribal work in South American jungles is the general direction of my missionary purpose.

The only people that can make peace are the parties to the conflict, and just as they are responsible for the conflict and its consequences, so should they be given responsibility and recognition for the peace.

I had old bunk beds that my dad got from Seabrook Farms. They were first used by German prisoners during World War II, who were sent to work the farms during the war. The metal beds with their thin mattresses could easily be used as a jungle gym and I loved them.