In every generation there is a vault-keeper, one who guards the links fiercely and knows they are more precious than rubies.

Part of my spiritual work is learning to live with the knowledge that we can't protect our loved ones from pain and heartache.

This may be a little bit of a provocative thing to say, but the memoirist doesn't owe the reader anything other than a good story and the inclining of the mind in the direction of memory. Of course, the memoirist is not allowed to make things up. But the really skilled memoirist knows what to leave in and what to leave out to serve the story. In autobiography you can't do that.

Recognize the possibility of the divine in any given moment.

My journals were a clearing house - a garbage can. Once I was writing seriously, I understood that this was the stuff that didn't belong in my work.

My son is now fourteen, and from the moment he was born, I understood that forevermore my heart would be walking around outside my body.

If you are a writer or any kind of artist, if you change something as fundamental as where you live - the way you live - then I think you change the very instrument that is trying to make the art