I think so much about how we read, about the nature of solitude, and of community, is changing in ways that none of us yet understand.

After my family leaves in the morning, I'll make my first coffee of the day and then I head upstairs to go to work. At least, that's my plan. I'm not going to check email. I'm not going on Facebook, or sneaking a glimpse at my Instagram feed. No. I'm not going to down that road. But with multiple devices, by the time I get upstairs [to my study] I may well have heard my iPhone ding and - it's Pavlovian.

Michael Lowenthal has written a big-hearted and wise book about familial love in all its richness and complexity.

I think there's something about a writer's disposition, that is, even if unaware, always slightly in a witness state.

My journals were a clearing house - a garbage can. Once I was writing seriously, I understood that this was the stuff that didn't belong in my work.

Those memories that are engraved within me become teaching tools, ways of connecting with others, of creating an empathic bridge, of reaching out a hand and saying, I've been there, too.

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