You are desperate to communicate, to edify or entertain, to preserve moments of grace or joy or transcendence, to make real or imagined events come alive. But you cannot will this to happen. It is a matter of persistence and faith and hard work. So you might as well just go ahead and get started.

You get your confidence and intuition back by trusting yourself, by being militantly on your own side. ... Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.

So Rita and I decided that the most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed.

I worry that Jesus drinks himself to sleep when he hears me talk like this.

Raising a child, whether or not it is yours, is like Nautilus of the heart and soul.

There are a lot of us, some published, some not, who think the literary life is the loveliest one possible, this life of reading and writing and corresponding. We think this life is nearly ideal.

Being a parent is absolutely exhausting and draining, along with all the joy and love.