We don't choose what's going to wake us up..

Those memories that are engraved within me become teaching tools, ways of connecting with others, of creating an empathic bridge, of reaching out a h….

Open your hearts. Deep inside ourselves, we are all one and the same..

The only graceful thing to do is recognize and embrace what is actually happening, rather than fight against it..

It is in the thousands of days of trying, failing, sitting, thinking, resisting, dreaming, raveling, unraveling that we are at our most engaged, aler….

Our pain is a part of who we authentically are..

If I dismiss the ordinary—waiting for the special, the extreme, the extraordinary to happen - I may just miss my life..

Everything you need to know about life can be learned from a genuine and ongoing attempt to write.

You can start your day over anytime..

What was going on inside of me became louder because everything around me became quieter..

I'll have my students try to follow their minds during the course of a day, just to see the way their minds work, the way our minds hop from thing to….

I don't know why this is, but I really believe that things don't happen when we're trying to will them into being. They don't happen when we're wait….

It's essential to have sacred time for writing. All successful authors have some daily commitment to keep on-track and moving forward..

Our teachers are everywhere. Our teachers are right in front of us, and take so many forms. All we need to do is to open our eyes, to be open to and ….

Confidence is highly overrated when it comes to creating literature. A writer who is overly confident will not engage in the struggle to get it exact….

Writing has been my window-flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence-my way of interpreting everything within my grasp..

My son is now fourteen, and from the moment he was born, I understood that forevermore my heart would be walking around outside my body..

I try to remember that the job - as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy - of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed b….

All there is to do, right at this very moment, is to breathe in, breathe out, and kiss the joy as it flies..

If I waited to be in the mood to write, I'd barely have a chapbook of material to my name. Who would ever be in the mood to write? Do marathon runner….

At some point each day (well, most days) I unroll my mat and practice for an hour. I sit in meditation for a while. This can be five minutes or twent….