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

I think so much about how we read, about the nature of solitude, and of community, is changing in ways that none of us yet understand.

This sadness wasn't a huge part of me--I wasn't remotely depressed--but still, it was like a stone I carried in my pocket. I always knew it was there. [p. 179]

We can't protect ourselves from pain and heartache.

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?

The Internet and all its lures are much, much harder than anything I've ever encountered. If you're writing on a computer, the very instrument you're writing on is already tainted by the world out there in all its permutations.

Everything I know about life I learned from the daily practice of sitting down to write.