Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation..

If you are writing the clearest, truest words you can find and doing the best you can to understand and communicate, this will shine on paper like it….

I've always thought I could use my brain and my heart to jockey everyone around to the good. But life is not jockeyable. When you try, you make peopl….

It's so great to be able to make people laugh, because this is so often how we get our selves back..

I worry that Jesus drinks himself to sleep when he hears me talk like this..

There are a lot of us, some published, some not, who think the literary life is the loveliest one possible, this life of reading and writing and corr….

I like the desert for short periods of time, from inside a car, with the windows rolled up, and the doors locked. I prefer beach resorts with room se….

Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived. Clutter is….

Certainty is missing the point entirely..

Gratitude begins in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior. It almost always makes you willing to be of service, which is where the joy resides..

Writing can be a pretty desperate endeavor, because it is about some of our deepest needs: our need to be visible, to be heard, our need to make sens….

I don't write about the intimate details of my cousins and aunts and uncles, and my mother and my father because it's not right to, for me..

Without using the word, everyone started forgiving each other again. Just like that, from the no of all nothingness: you have a big tense mess and ou….

You are not your bank account, or your ambitiousness. You're not the cold clay lump with a big belly you leave behind when you die. You're not your c….

...most of the time, all you have is the moment, and the imperfect love of the people around you..

To be great, art has to point somewhere..

I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish..

The evidence is in, and you are the verdict..

My mind is a neighborhood I try not to go into alone..

Sometimes Heaven is just a new pair of glasses..

If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise, you'll just be rearranging furniture in rooms you've al….