Music inspires me and puts me in the right mood, but to actually listen to it when I write - I find it gets in the way.

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

you wanted it all to make senseand you wanted the most complicated answer, but the answer is simple.just be.

Come what will, one comfort's always left — that unfailing comfort is, it's all predestinated.

Gran...I just want to say thank you for everything. I didn't realize how much you sacrificed.” “Children never do. Good Lord made it that way.

Time cannot be saved, it can only be spent, and if not spent wisely and well, it is wasted.

Have no friends not equal to yourself.

I want to go where you're going. I'm not scared of dying. I want to stay together and come back together. You said that souls cohere. I want to stay with you.

As someone who has moved around a fair amount, I wondered what it would be like to stay rooted to one place, one community.

Everyones childhood plays itself out. No wonder no one knows the other or can completely understand.

I'm a huge proponent of therapy and analysis, but it's something that, in a nonprofessional way, can be abused.

What greater ornament to a son than a father's glory, or to a father than a son's honorable conduct?