27 Quotes by Susan Straight

All my best memories of my brother are in vehicles, speeding, predatory or celebratory. We were just made to drive. For the last 12 years of his life, he lived as caretaker of an orange grove. There, on 18 acres, my brother collected cars and trucks and motorcycles.

I still live in the same place I've lived all my life.

All I am is a writer and a mom.

I don't write about myself. I'm never in my books.

My mother and father split up when I was three and my brother was still in the womb.

I have not ever been able to decide how would my girls have fared if they came up in a different time?

I have more than 100 legal pads filled with handwriting. Eight novels, two books for children, countless stories and essays.

Real novelists, those we admire, those we consider timeless in their language and character and scene, those who receive accolades for inventive language and form, have writing lives we imagine in specific ways.

For someone like me who's lived in the same place her whole life - I mean, I lived three blocks from where I was born, and I met my future husband in the eighth grade - there are always family stories and legends passed down.