It is unearned love--the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It's the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you. Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.

Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist's true friend.

Life with most teenagers was like having a low-grade bladder infection. It hurts, but you had to tough it out.

She lived in fear of ifonic endings.

Charles had once remarked that holding onto a resentment was like eating rat poison and waiting for the rat to die.

I like the desert for short periods of time, from inside a car, with the windows rolled up, and the doors locked. I prefer beach resorts with room service.

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head.