Those memories that are engraved within me become teaching tools, ways of connecting with others, of creating an empathic bridge, of reaching out a hand and saying, I've been there, too.

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

Nothing will unfold for us unless we move toward whatlooks to us like nothing: faith is a cascade.

Who cares about what they think. Do what makes you feel alive and make every minute of your life count.

I do not understand, why should mankind destroy each other?. Instead of building and working together for the common good?

The truths embodied in historical stories are thus not absolute or universal, but relative to the cultural context in which they are made.

Love a girl and she will give you a story to tell, Love a woman and she will give you a novel to pen...

A kind of childlike purity to her repose that made the thought of kissing her seem vile.

The only reason the House hasn't done even more damage is that the Senate often sands down the most noxious ideas, making the bills merely bad, not disastrous.

Suffering, if it is accepted together, borne together, is joy.

My mom's hot. I mean she's old, but my mom's out of control.

Death had his grudge against me, and he got up in the way, like an armed robber, with a pike in his hand.