My mother might find a thin gold chain at the back of a drawer, wadded into an impossibly tight knot, and give it to me to untangle. It would have a shiny, sweaty smell, and excite me: Gold chains linked you to the great fairy tales and myths, to Arabia, and India; to the great weight of the world, but lighter than a feather.

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

Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.

I've written six novels and four pieces of nonfiction, so I don't really have a genre these days.

Right foot, left foot, right foot, breathe.

But you don't always get what you want;,you get what you get

A nun I know once told me she kept begging God to take her character defects away from her. After years of this prayer, God finally got back to her: I'm not going to take anything away from you, you have to give it to Me.