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

If you are a writer or any kind of artist, if you change something as fundamental as where you live - the way you live - then I think you change the very instrument that is trying to make the art

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.

When I sit down with my notebook, when I start scribbling words across the page, I find out what I’m feeling.

It's easier in an urban world to cast the blame outward. So I've learned a lot about my own process in that way.

Our pain is a part of who we authentically are.

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.