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

You can start your day over anytime.

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.

I do strongly identify with being Jewish. I was raised Orthodox and had a childhood complicated by the fact that my father was deeply religious and my mother was not.

Our minds have a tendency to wander. To duck and feint and keep us at a slight remove from the moment at hand.

Let me tell you something about hypochondria: It's a pernicious, undermining little demon. It won't kill you, but it will sap the color from your life so that in the loveliest moments, the moments of grace, you are hit with that whisper in your ear that takes it all away. I'm sick, I'm dying - I just don't know it yet.

I found myself doing so much public speaking, more and more and bigger and bigger.