I get to tell my truth. I get to seek meaning and realization. I get to live fully, wildly, imperfectly. That's why I'm alive. And all I actually hav….

Reading poetry and reading the great works of the canon that we were reading in the '60s and the '70s and '80s was mind altering..

After a while the middle-aged person who lives in her head begins to talk to her soul, the kid..

You can change the world with a hot bath, if you sink into it from a place of knowing that you are worth profound care, even when you're dirty and ra….

One line of dialogue that rings true reveals character in a way that pages of description can't..

I know that if I feel any deprivation or fear [about money], the solution is to give. The solution is to go find some mothers on the streets of San R….

This is who I want to be in the world. This is who I think we are supposed to be, people who help call forth human beings from deep inside hopelessne….

All these people keep waxing sentimental about how fabulously well I am doing as a mother, how competent I am, but I feel inside like when you're fir….

Mothers are supposed to listen and, afterward, to respond with some wisdom and perspective, but these things were not my mother's strong suit..

Age has given me what I was looking for my entire life - it gave me me. It provided the time and experience and failures and triumphs and friends who….

And as it turns out, if one person is praying for you, buckle up. Things can happen..

Dogs are the closest we come to knowing the divine love of God on this side of eternity..

All I ever wanted since I arrived here on Earth were the things that turned out to be within reach. The same things I needed as a baby - to go from c….

Alice Adams wrote a sweet note to me after my first novel came out when I was 26, and I was so blown away that I sent her a bunch of stamps by return….

My father was a writer, so I grew up writing and reading and I was really encouraged by him..

Perfection is shallow, unreal, and fatally uninteresting..

It was simple reality - most competitive tennis players in my day were privileged, spoiled, entitled and white. Also, many of them were beautiful, fi….

Radical self-care is quantum, and radiates out into the atmosphere, like a little fresh air..

I understood that the man I was calling for could never ever come back. Because I understood that the man that I was calling for was dead..

On the spiritual path, all the dreck and misery is transformed, maybe not that same day, but still transformed into spiritual fuel or insight..

If we can believe in the Gnostic gospel of Thomas, old Uncle Jesus said, "If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. ….