Needless to say, there was no one around remotely fitting the description of a normal person: I was at a writing conference.

If you don't die of thirst, there are blessings in the desert. You can be pulled into limitlessness, which we all yearn for, or you can do the beauty of minutiae, the scrimshaw of tiny and precise. The sky is your ocean, and the crystal silence will uplift you like great gospel music, or Neil Young.

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.

Life with most teenagers was like having a low-grade bladder infection. It hurts, but you had to tough it out.

The worst time in any writer's life is the two months before publication. ALL writers become mental and pathetic, even those of devout faith, who have some psychological healing to lean up against, and gorgeous lives. All writers think that this time, the jig is up, and they will be exposed as frauds.

Right foot, left foot, right foot, breathe.

Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to actually show up somewhere... You don't have to dress up, for instance, and you can't hear them boo you right away.