I spend most of my time alone, because I so value and thrive in the quiet. Heaven.

Perfection is shallow, unreal, and fatally uninteresting.

I naturally prefer the company of people who hold grudges, as long as they are not held against me.

When you pray, you are not starting the conversation from scratch, just remembering to plug back into a conversation that's always in progress.

We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason why they write so little.

The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out.

It's a great time to be alive.