If there's anything weirder than an introverted writer going to lots of social functions, it's an introverted writer being converted into an accidental guru.

How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'

I've always felt like my nose is pressed to glass. I always feel a little bit like an outsider.

Success is so fleeting, even if you get a good book deal or your book is a huge success, there's always the fear: What about the next one?

What's more important that spiritual life? It seems to me it's the bedrock of everything essential about being human.

I do keep a tiny little journal in which I write passages that I read and want to hold on to. This practice is sort of the opposite of Twitter.

I was in my early thirties writing about my early twenties, so there was this way of seeing my younger self from enough of a distance to have perspective but also not to feel that I had to protect myself. My dreams for myself then would have undersold myself in a way.