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.

Everything changes. The more I try to hold on to the moment, the more it slips through my fingers.

Recognize the possibility of the divine in any given moment.

I never troll for material. It simply presents itself, and is always unmistakable. This is why I want to roll my eyes when people interrupt themselves in the middle of some story they're telling me to say, "You know you can't write about this."

I'm most connected to myself when I'm alone in a room, moving my hand across a page. That's when I feel most like me.

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

I'm very disciplined, but the one thing that I have addictive behavior about is the Internet.