A priest friend of mine has cautioned me away from the standard God of our childhoods, who loves you and guides you and then, if you are bad, roasts you: God as a high school principal in a gray suit who never remembered your name but is always leafing unhappily through your files.

You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town

Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious.

Quiet, deep breath after any prayer is another form of Amen.

I'm very successful, but there are 50,000 general interest books published every year. If you don't want to read mine, there are others.

The depth of the feeling continued to surprise and threaten me, but each time it hit again and I bore it...I would discover that it hadn't washed me away.

Now she and I sit together in her room and eat chocolate, and I tell her that in a very long time when we both to go heaven, we should try to get chairs next to each other, close to the dessert table.