There's no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what. What destroys what. What causes what to flourish or die or take another course.

I think the first thing - if you want to be a writer - the first thing you need to do is write. Which sounds like an obvious piece of advice. But so many people have this feeling they want to be a writer and they love to read but they don't actually write very much. The main part of being a writer, though, is being profoundly alone for hours on end, uninterrupted by email or friends or children or romantic partners and really sinking into the work and writing. That's how I write. That's how writing gets done.

I had problems a therapist couldn't solve; grief that no man in a room could ameliorate.

He kissed me hard and I kissed him back harder, like it was the end of an era that had lasted all of my life.

With fiction, it could be about anything. It just has to be good writing, like Maria Semple's "Where'd You Go, Bernadette," which I read recently. I want to forget I have a book in my hand.

What’s important is that you make the leap. Jump high and hard with intention and heart. Pay no mind to the vision that the commission made up. It’s up to you to make your life. Take what you have and stack it up like a tower of teetering blocks. Build your dream around that.

I had to go on without my mother, even though I was suffering terribly, grieving her.