No matter how people mess with you or let you down, or how you let yourself down, a good book means that when you get in bed that night, you have a good hour. I feel like you pay all day for that hour. That's what books mean to me. I can open this two-dimensional , flat white page with squiggly little black marks on them, and someone has created this world that you're going to enter into.

Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises.

I get thirsty people glasses of water, even if that thirsty person is just me.

It's a great time to be alive.

You are not your bank account, or your ambitiousness. You're not the cold clay lump with a big belly you leave behind when you die. You're not your collection of walking personality disorders. You are spirit, you are love.

I never had a particularly strong craving to procreate, except for earlier fantasies of wanting to be Marmee in Little Women.

But it was the singing that pulled me in and split me wide open.