Getting into a new relationship is like pouring Miracle-Gro on your character defects.

We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. The writer's job is to turn the unspeakable into words - not just into any words, but if we can, into rhythm and blues.

Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.

She felt as if the mosaic she had been assembling out of life's little shards got dumped to the ground, and there was no way to put it back together.

When you make friends with fear, it can’t rule you.

[Her] work taught me that you could be all the traditional feminine things -- a mother, a lover, a listener, a nurturer -- and you could also be critically astute and radical and have a minority opinion that was profoundly moral.

And she is going to dance, dance hungry, dance full, dance each cold astonishing moment, now when she is young and again when she is old.