Being a high school teacher was wonderful, but unsustainable: I needed a way out.

Bulgaria is a fascinating, beautiful, difficult country, and I fell in love with it.

My first months in Sofia were a time of intense disorientation: I had never been to that part of the world before; I could barely speak the language; everything seemed strange to me.

I think it's harder to avoid reflection on those larger patterns of history or society when they so insistently call into question your right to exist.

I'm not sure I can articulate any principles behind the decisions about what to cut and what to keep.

Woolf is an important writer for me, someone I read often and who forms part of my ideal of what literature can do.

I'm drawn to fiction that hints at nonfiction, that blurs or seems to blur the boundaries between invention and autobiography.

When I took my first poetry class, I felt that I could understand the relationships between words and the formal qualities of language in a way I would never understand music.

I felt a lot of ambivalence about going back to graduate school for a second MFA. The impulse was really the opposite from what it had been more than a decade before: I wanted to interrupt a career.

I take pleasure as a reader in books that tease with a kind of urgency of the real, even if it's only a manufactured effect.

I do think that calling a book nonfiction affirms a kind of responsibility to an attempt at truth.

You can never know everything, and part of what you know is always wrong. Perhaps even the most important part. A portion of wisdom lies in knowing that. A portion of courage lies in going on anyway.

Sometimes life can be unexpected. Sometimes things surprise you and all you can do is roll with the punches or let them beat you to a bloody pulp. -Sage Hannigan, Contingency

The Book of Life was created as a tool for humans to use to grow in wisdom, knowledge, and power.

It is true that in general, energy which is aimed at positive factors usually obtains better results than energy invested in resistance!

It is an unnecessary burden to make negative judgmental assumptions about others. We are all on a journey.

Just having someone there. The right person that you can honestly say you love, and love's you in return is a blessing.

'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view and robes the mountain in its azure hue.

I'm always going to try to win with a positive mindset.

An adult has the opportunity to enjoy the wisdom gleaned from previous decades of living and experience.

Kids today don't watch a black and white movie.