If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread.

Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives.

Do you think its possible to live without wanting to put your name on your paintings? To belong to a group so securely you don't need to rise above it?

I know I have to write about the things that keep me awake at night.

A woman knows she can walk away from a pot to tend something else and the pot will go on boiling; if she couldn't this world would end at once.

When I look out the window, I exhale a prayer of thanks for the color green, for my children's safety, for the simple acts of faith like planting a garden that helped see us through another spring, another summer. And I inhale some kind of promise to protect my kids' hopes and good intentions we began with in this country. Freedom of speech, the protection of diversity - these are the most important ingredients of American civil life and my own survival. If I ever took them for granted, I don't know.

It's a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can't begin to understand the question. For me, the discipline is turning off the computer and leaving my desk to do something else.