It is only with distance that we are able to turn our powers of observation on ourselves, thus fashioning stories in which we are characters.

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

If there's one common thread throughout all of history, it's that people have always fallen for the wrong people.

Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book...

If there's hell below, we're all gonna go.

I was a vampire, and she had the sweetest blood I’d smelled in eighty years.

Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin. Bankruptcies and losses concentrate the mind on prudent behavior.

We Gypsies know that where Jews are killed, Gypsies are always murthered too. And then a lot of other people, usually.

The appalling thing about war is that it kills all love of truth.

My job affords me the luxury of having help. I don't feel exhausted, I feel lucky.

My songs are not pretty. They're what I call optimistic realism.

I think these are very precarious times for women, it seems. So many of your rights are under assault.