The reason I never give up hope is because everything is so basically hopeless.

The real payoff is the writing itself, that a day when you have gotten your work done is a good day, that total dedication is the point.

'Help' is a prayer that is always answered.

And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn’t have to anymore.

Trying to reason with an addict was like trying to blow out a lightbulb.

My idea of absolute happiness is to be in bed on a rainy day, with my blankie, my cat, and my dog.

Two things put me in the spirit to give. One is that I have come to think of everyone with whom I come into contast as a patient in the emergency room. I see a lot of gaping wounds and dazed expressions. Or, as Marianne Moore put it, "The world's an orphan's home." And this feels more true than almost anything else I know. But so many of us can be soothed by writing: think of how many times you have opened a book, read one line, and said, "Yes!" And I want to give people that feeling, too, of connection, communication.