Gratitude, not understanding, is the secret to joy and equanimity.

I was raised by my parents to believe that you had a moral obligation to try and save the world. You sent money to the Red Cross, you registered people to vote, you marched in rallies, stood in vigils, picked up litter.

You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind.

Her purse was a weight, ballast; it tethered her to the earth as her mind floated away.

When hope is not pinned wriggling onto a shiny image or expectation, it sometimes floats forth and opens.

The worst time in any writer's life is the two months before publication. ALL writers become mental and pathetic, even those of devout faith, who have some psychological healing to lean up against, and gorgeous lives. All writers think that this time, the jig is up, and they will be exposed as frauds.

Once an old woman at my church said the secret is that God loves us exactly the way we are and that he loves us too much to let us stay like this, and I'm just trying to trust that.