Everything you need to know about life can be learned from a genuine and ongoing attempt to write

There's nothing confessional about crafting and shaping a story out of a lived life. In fact, it's quite the opposite - the writer has to be able to transcend the life, to see it as if standing outside of it, in order to be able to make something of it. There's something enormously satisfying and gratifying about crafting something, taking all that chaos and giving it shape.

As a fiction writer, that's been a preoccupation of mine: Can you really just close the door and leave the past back there behind you, or is the door going to blow open at some point?

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.

The only graceful thing to do is recognize and embrace what is actually happening, rather than fight against it.

The truth is in the present moment.

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