So a moral position is not a message. A moral position is a passionate caring inside you.

Here's how I became myself: mess, failure, mistakes, disappointments, and extensive reading; limbo, indecision, setbacks, addiction, public embarrassment, and endless conversations with my best women friends; the loss of people without whom I could not live, the loss of pets that left me reeling, dizzying betrayals but much greater loyalty, and overall, choosing as my motto William Blake's line that we are here to learn to endure the beams of love.

I do for myself exactly what I would do for you - make a lovely cup of tea, or a hot bath, or go buy myself a fabulous pair of socks. I believe that you take the action, and THEN the insight follows - I do loving things for me, stroke my own shoulder, put myself down for a short nap, and the insight follows: that I am a wild precious woman, a human merely being, as e e cummings put it, deserving of respect, tenderness, protection, delight, and solidarity. And that is what Home looks like for me now.

You are going to love some of your characters because they are you or some facet of you, and you are going to hate some of your characters for the same reason.

I am an Aries. Although I do not believe in astrology, I think this is exactly the right sign to have been born under.

Love falls to earth, rises from the ground, pools around the afflicted. Love pulls people back to their feet. Bodies and souls are fed. Bones and lives heal. New blades of grass grow from charred soil. The sun rises.

I've known for years that resentments don't hurt the person we resent, but they do hurt us.