All I know is that after 10 years of being sober, with huge support to express my pain and anger and shadow, the grief and tears didn’t wash me away.….

You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. ... You put a pie….

Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material col….

Grief is just so scary.... If we finally begin to cry all those suppressed tears, they will surely wash us away like the Mississippi River. That's wh….

Having a child as a single mother was a crucible - maybe this is true for all parents. I got rid of so much stuff that didn't really matter in the sc….

Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back. You're done. It doesn't necessarily mean that you want to have lunch with the per….

...It really IS easier to experience spiritual connection when your life is in the process of coming apart..

This business of having been issued a body is deeply confusing... Bodies are so messy and disappointing..

I feel incredibly successful. I make a living as a writer and am able to help support a big family, my church, my bleeding-heart causes..

It is unearned love--the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It's the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are….

Dancing almost always turns out to be a good idea..

The worst time in any writer's life is the two months before publication. ALL writers become mental and pathetic, even those of devout faith, who hav….

Sometimes this human stuff is slimy and pathetic...but better to feel it and talk about it and walk through it than to spend a lifetime being silentl….

When you pray, you are not starting the conversation from scratch, just remembering to plug back into a conversation that's always in progress..

Again and again I tell God I need help, and God says, 'Well, isn't that fabulous? Because I need help too. So you go get that old woman over there so….

We were raised to believe in books, music, and nature..

I go to church every Sunday, which is like going to the gas station once a week and really, really filling up..

So Rita and I decided that the most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed..

Her purse was a weight, ballast; it tethered her to the earth as her mind floated away..

If we stay where we are, where we're stuck, where we're comfortable and safe, we die there... When nothing new can get in, that's death..

The whistle is always waiting to be blown, and in some ways, it gets me to do better work..