I never had a particularly strong craving to procreate, except for earlier fantasies of wanting to be Marmee in Little Women.

Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.

The evidence is in, and you are the verdict.

When everything starts going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born.

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

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

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