"I'm not going anywhere," she told me that night. But until we are old ladies-a cypress age, a Sawtooth age-I will continue to link arms with her, in public, in private, in a panic of love.

The beginning of the end can feel a lot like the middle when you are living in it.

When you're a kid, it's hard to tell the innocuous secrets from the ones that will kill you if you keep them.

Fiction helps me to reconnect with the true, deep weirdness inherent in everyday reality, in our dealings with one another, in just being alive.

It was sad and fierce all at once, alive with a lonely purity.

My older sister has entire kingdoms inside of her, and some of them are only accessible at certain seasons, in certain kinds of weather.

I spent most of my 20s with these alligator wrestlers in the swamps of South Florida.

It is a special kind of homelessness to be evicted from your dreams.

Self-disciplin e is necessary, but so is playfulness, flexibility, joy. When you stop demanding perfection of yourself, your writing desk will become a spacious place.

There are certain prehistoric things that swim beyond extinction.

You small mortals don't realize the power of your stories.

You cannot expect a corrupt law enforcement system to prosecute the illegal activities of corporations and their government minions.

Where there are humans, You'll find flies, And Buddhas.

Which of these statements creates more anxiety in you: 'There is no God' or 'There is no money'?

My mothers into frilly dresses and eyelashes and hairstyles from the 1970s. We always argue about that.

Creation, like destruction, always seems to get a little out of hand; otherwise it could hardly be called creative.

Your kids are never to young or too old to hear nice words about them.

I mean to prove I mean to move in my own way/ And say I've been getting along/ For long before you came into the play.

But, you know, I'm presiding over an institution that was designed not to work.

People in love look into each other's souls, and it is that feeling that I try to capture when I sing.

We may live without friends; we may live without books But civilized men cannot live without cooks.