Confidence is highly overrated when it comes to creating literature. A writer who is overly confident will not engage in the struggle to get it exactly right on the page - but rather, will assume that she's getting it right without the struggle.

My desk is covered with talismans: pieces of rose quartz, wishing stones from a favorite beach.

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.

Open your hearts. Deep inside ourselves, we are all one and the same.

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

When a writer's whole being is poured into a piece of work, there is never enough. The feeling of finally getting to the end of a piece of work, of making it as good as you can at that moment, is more of a relief than anything else, and then you wait for reviews.

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