We don't choose what's going to wake us up.

You can start your day over anytime.

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 do keep a tiny little journal in which I write passages that I read and want to hold on to. This practice is sort of the opposite of Twitter.

Devotion, as it relates to the title of my memoir, means fidelity - as in fidelity to a person or a practice. I think it's certainly possible to feel devotion without having faith, at least in the religious sense of the word.

As writers, it is our job not only to imagine, but to witness.

Everything I know about life I learned from the daily practice of sitting down to write.