The secret is to keep adding voices, adding ideas, and moving things around as you put together your life. If you’re lucky, putting together your life is a process that will last through every single day you’re alive.

Why is it that we understand playing the cello will require work, but we attribute writing to the magic of inspiration?

I could teach. I could wait tables. I could cook in a restaurant. Food and teaching were the two skills I had.

I think the best vacation is the one that relieves me of my own life for a while and then makes me long for it again.

If you want to write and can't figure out how to do it, try this: Pick an amount of time to sit at your desk every day. Start with twenty minutes, say, and work up as quickly as possible to as much time as you can spare. Do you really want to write? Sit for two hours a day.

There can be something cruel about people who have had good fortune. They equate it with personal goodness.

Love was action. It came to you. It was not a choice.