Because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, How alive am I willing to be?

Laughter is carbonated holiness.

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

I honestly think that in order to be a writer you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here?

I love silence. I seek and create it at every opportunity. I need it to work.

Now. Maybe you think it is arrogant or self centered, or ridiculous for me to believe that God bothered to wiggle a cheap bolt out of my new used car because he or she needed to keep me away for a few days until just the moment when my old friend most needed me to help her mother move into whatever comes next. Maybe nothing conscious helped to stall me so that I would be there when I could be most useful. Or maybe it did. I’ll never know for sure. And anyway, it doesn’t really matter.

The problem is acceptance, which is something we're taught not to do. We're taught to improve uncomfortable situations, to change things, alleviate unpleasant feelings. But if you accept the reality that you have been given- that you are not in a productive creative period- you free yourself to begin filling up again.