Let me tell you something about hypochondria: It's a pernicious, undermining little demon. It won't kill you, but it will sap the color from your life so that in the loveliest moments, the moments of grace, you are hit with that whisper in your ear that takes it all away. I'm sick, I'm dying - I just don't know it yet.

The truth is in the present moment.

What's more important that spiritual life? It seems to me it's the bedrock of everything essential about being human.

The Internet and all its lures are much, much harder than anything I've ever encountered. If you're writing on a computer, the very instrument you're writing on is already tainted by the world out there in all its permutations.

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

Moving to the country has been incredibly good for my work, for my sense of perspective.

Writing well involves walking the path of most resistance. Sitting still, being patient, allowing the lunatic dream to take shape on the page, then the shaping, the pencil on the page, breathing, slowing down, being willing–no, more than willing, being wide open–to press the bruise until it blossoms.