Help" is a prayer that is always answered. It doesn't matter how you pray--with your head bowed in silence, or crying out in grief, or dancing. Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors. Years ago I wrote an essay that began, "Some people think that God is in the details, but I have come to believe that God is in the bathroom.

Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.

...It really IS easier to experience spiritual connection when your life is in the process of coming apart.

Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly.

This is one thing they forget to mention in most child-rearing books, that at times you will just lose your mind. Period.

Writing takes a combination of sophistication and innocence; it takes conscience, our belief that something is beautiful because it is right.

My parents, and librarians along the way, taught me about the space between words; about the margins, where so many juicy moments of life and spirit and friendship could be found. In a library, you could find miracles and truth and you might find something that would make you laugh so hard that you get shushed, in the friendliest way.