The reason 'help' is such a great prayer is that God is the gift of desperation. When you're in despair, you're teachable.

Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises.

So I was doing well academically, and I was a well-ranked tennis player and was the apple of my handsome father's eye-and then I would bring home a report card with a B-plus on it, and my parents would look at the report card as if I'd flunked. "Uh, honey?" one of them would ask, looking perplexed. "Now, this isn't a criticism but, if you could get a B-plus in philosophy, how much harder would it have been to get an A-minus?"

I quit my last real job, as a writer at a magazine, when I was twenty-one. That was the moment when I lost my place of prestige on the fast track, and slowly, millimeter by millimeter, I started to get found, to discover who I had been born to be, instead of the impossibly small package, all tied up tightly in myself, that I had agreed to be.

Greasy food is so comforting when you are hungover.

I've seen prayers answered. But often, in my experiences, if you get what you pray for, you've really shortchanged yourself.

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