I'd had no particular interest in the Southwest at all as a young girl, and I was completely surprised that the desert stole my heart to the extent it did.

We’re all misfits herefrom our weirdnesses and our differences, from our manic fixations, our obsessions, our passions. From all those wild and wacky things that make each of us unique.

What I find interesting about folklore is the dialogue it gives us with storytellers from centuries past.

In more recent years, I've become more and more fascinated with the indigenous folklore of this land, Native American folklore, and also Hispanic folklore now that I live in the Southwest.

I'm also looking for gems that the average reader might have missed.

Happiness is a talent like any other. It's another art form. Some people are good at it, some people aren't.

The fairy tale journey may look like an outward trek across plains and mountains, through castles and forests, but the actual movement is inward, into the lands of the soul.

Magic Realism is not new. The label's new, the specific Latin American form of it is new, its modern popularity is new, but it's been around as long as literature has been around.

There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book. (…) A good novel editor is invisible.

We've always lived in dark times. There has always been a range of human experience from the sublime to the brutal, and stories reflect it. It's no less brutal now; each age has its horrors.

I'm an artist, I'm not an academic folklorist.

Doggedness in art is no substitute for inspiration.

If one maintains the intent of, ‘no one should have the slightest difficulty on my account’, then his work will be considered to be done.

The world isn't built with a ramp.

Maybe I should think of nothing at all? But that was passion impossible. As soon as I tried to thinking of anything, millions of ideas flooded my brain.

We enact many laws that manufacture criminals, and then a few that punish them.

I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don't want, and get it.

I'm particularly weird because I don't even like being looked at.

Follow the stroke - or be the stroke that the rest can follow.

Most of us go through the world never seeing anything. Then you meet somebody like Herb and Dorothy, who have eyes that see. Something goes from the eye to the soul without going through the brain.

I don't advocate civil disobedience. I do advocate the role of an informed citizen to try to overturn when a court makes a mistake and gets an issue wrong.