I could write another collection of personal essays from what has happened to me in the last year alone. I don't seek out my material - it finds me. I am magnetic, somehow.

I was in advertising for years. That was cushy, you know? It's pretty cushy in a lot of ways, but I hated it.

God, I felt certain, did not mind that I didn’t press my hands together to pray. I was casual, but I was sincere. I knew that God existed as the Correct Answer inside my chest.

I don't sit down at nine in the morning and begin writing and then take a break for lunch and stop at four. I have no structure like that. I am at my computer constantly, more or less attached to it. I live on-line and hate being off-line and don't care how unhealthy it is.

This is how you survive the unsurvivable, this is how you lose that which you cannot bear to lose, this is how you reinvent yourself, overcome your abusers, fulfill your ambitions and meet the love of your life: by following what is true, no matter where it leads you.

There is no such thing as too ordinary to write about, whether that's life or a scene in a novel. What's interesting to people, whether it's memoir or fiction, is the truth.

After was better. Before was only there so After could happen.