How wild it was, to let it be.

I was trying to find a new home in the world.

I walked all those miles, I learned all those lessons. It's as if my new life was the gift I got at the end of a long struggle.

You can't replicate walking 94 days through the wilderness by yourself with a really heavy pack until you do it.

Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves.

Of course some people manage to write books really young and publish really young. But for most writers, it takes several years because you have to apprentice yourself to the craft, and you also have to grow up. I think maturity is connected to one's ability to write well.

Once I was in a cafe in Portland and the woman at the next table and I began chatting and in the course of our conversation she strongly recommend I visit this web site called 'The Rumpus' so I could read this advice column called 'Dear Sugar.' It was so painful not to tell her that in fact I was Sugar, but I didn't.