Now, if you ask me, what’s going on is that we’re all up to here in it, and probably the most important thing is that we not yell at one another..

You don't always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it too..

My family tends to be pretty alcoholic and drug-addicted..

Plot springs from character... I've always sort of believed that these people inside me- these characters- know who they are and what they're about a….

You simply keep putting down one damn word after the other, as you hear them, as they come to you. You can either set brick as a laborer or as an art….

The grief and tears didn't wash me away. They gave me my life back! They cleansed me, baptized me, hydrated the earth at my feet..

Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but….

At our most primitive we are storytellers and dancers..

I get thirsty people glasses of water, even if that thirsty person is just me..

Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance..

When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on….

Learning to love back is the hardest part of being alive..

Being enough was going to have to be an inside job..

We are going to die, as is everyone we adore - I hate this! But the question is, how do we live as women and men in the face of this? Why do we let o….

I quit my last real job, as a writer at a magazine, when I was twenty-one. That was the moment when I lost my place of prestige on the fast track, an….

It's good to do uncomfortable things. It's weight training for life..

I didn't write about my mother much in the third year after she died. I was still trying to get my argument straight: When her friends or our relativ….

You are going to love some of your characters because they are you or some facet of you, and you are going to hate some of your characters for the sa….

The last song was so deep and raw and pure that I could not escape. It was as if the people were singing in between the notes, weeping and joyful at ….

This is the most profound spiritual truth I know: that even when we're most sure that love can't conquer all, it seems to anyway. It goes down into t….

Any plot you impose on your characters will be onomatopoetic: PLOT. I say don't worry about plot. Worry about the characters. Let what they say or do….