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

You have to believe in yourself before the world has given you any indication that you should believe in yourself as a writer.

Writing has been my window-flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence-my way of interpreting everything within my grasp.

When I was writing my first novel, I smoked cigarettes. And when I think about what it was like to smoke, I remember exactly the feeling of sitting in front of my big old computer in that little room where I wrote my first novel.

We're all simultaneously separated and connected by our devices, staring into our little screens, and also hungry for experience and community.

The truth is in the present moment.

If I dismiss the ordinary—waiting for the special, the extreme, the extraordinary to happen - I may just miss my life.