I used to tell my writing students that they must write the books they wished they could come upon - because then the books they hungered and thirsted for would exist.

I don't have any romantic views of parenting. Every step of the way it's really hard. It's a dangerous world, physically and psychologically.

My mind is a neighborhood I try not to go into alone.

... the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. [pp. 65-66]

Sometimes I think God loves the ones who most desperately ache and are most desperately lost - his or her wildest, most messed-up children - the way you'd ache and love a screwed-up rebel daughter in juvenile hall.

A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way.

I honestly think that in order to be a writer you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here?