"We all of us have been time-minded all our lives. This was good at least for a future fiction writer, being able to learn so penetratingly, and almost first of all, about chronology. It was one of a good many things I learned almost without knowing it; it would be there when I needed it." "Listening," page 3

"All of this, but especially the train, represents my father's fondest beliefs- in progress, in the future. With these gifts, he was preparing his children." "Listening," page 5

"It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they came from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them- with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed...