I could spend two years cross-legged on my floor and feel like I was working.

The writing life requires courage, patience, persistence, empathy, openness, and the ability to deal with rejection. It requires the willingness to be alone with oneself. To be gentle with oneself. To look at the world without blinders on. To observe and withstand what one sees. To be disciplined, and at the same time, take risks. To be willing to fail - not just once, but again and again, over the course of a lifetime.

As a writer we are our own instruments; we need to protect our instrument, because no one will protect it if we don't.

I was doing a lot of yoga and learning to meditate, and I found that extremely helpful, and still do and hopefully always will.

I'll have my students try to follow their minds during the course of a day, just to see the way their minds work, the way our minds hop from thing to thing to thing. The Internet mirrors that to such a degree you can actually see it. Show me your search history and I'll show you who you are.

I don't want to lean back into the past, or forward into the future. I don't want to wish the present moment away.

From spiritual connection springs kindness, connection, social activism, and love.