I found myself doing so much public speaking, more and more and bigger and bigger.

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 by it.

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

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

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

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

I do whatever is necessary in order to maintain the equanimity we all need to withstand the disappointment and rejection that are the lot of every writer, no matter where we are in our careers.

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

My desk is covered with talismans: pieces of rose quartz, wishing stones from a favorite beach.

How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'

If you are a writer or any kind of artist, if you change something as fundamental as where you live - the way you live - then I think you change the very instrument that is trying to make the art

There will come a time when people will realize the greatest mysteries of the universe: will a human then meet anything other than himself?

That's what tears are for, you know, to wash away the fear and cool the hate.

I love to receive a beautiful postcard from your place of voyage.

The legal battle against segregation is won, but the community battle goes on.

There is this weird thing that happens, when you stop worrying so much about what other people think of you...you suddenly start seeing what you think of you.

Do not let the rapidity with which these thoughts can change deceive you into feeling that you think them all at once.

Dante to Abby: My God you are going to kill me. Again

If you're going to play stickball in Canarsie you better learn Brooklyn rules.

Weak Christians are afraid of the shadow of the cross.

Almost makes you want to go to jail out here, doesn't it?