If I waited to be in the mood to write, I'd barely have a chapbook of material to my name. Who would ever be in the mood to write? Do marathon runners get in the mood to run? Do teachers wake up with the urge to lecture? I don't know, but I doubt it. My guess is that it's the very act that is generative. The doing of the thing that makes possible the desire for it.

I never feel so alive as when I'm writing and the work is going well.

If you write memoir, it can't be about blame or hurt; it has to be creative.

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

In my life as a wife and mother, I'm always conscious of my desire to be present.

We can't protect ourselves from pain and heartache. In fact, to love - fully, madly, deeply - is the ensure heartache some day.

It is only with distance that we are able to turn our powers of observation on ourselves, thus fashioning stories in which we are characters.