People have writer's block not because they can't write, but because they despair of writing eloquently.

The New Testament has had a really powerful effect on how I write and how I live my life.

Speech is the voice of the heart.

Grief remains one of the few things that has the power to silence us. It is a whisper in the world and a clamor within. More than sex, more than faith, even more than its usher death, grief is unspoken, publicly ignored except for those moments at the funeral that are over too quickly, or the conversations among the cognoscenti, those of us who recognize in one another a kindred chasm deep in the center of who we are.

I really feel like I'm a liberal because I'm a Catholic, because I took the words of the New Testament to heart.

I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make my marriage vows mean what they say. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.

Each instance of sexual harassment has to be judged on its merits. Facts, timing, motives, credibility: all must be considered before we make up our own minds what to believe.