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

When I started meditating, even doing yoga, I felt like it was hard to allow myself to develop any other kind of practice [outside of Judaism], like I was somehow being untrue to my heritage, and that was something I had to get over and was probably the greatest revelation to me.

We can't protect ourselves from pain and heartache.

I'll have my students try to follow their minds during the course of a day, just to see the way their minds work, the way our minds hop from thing to thing to thing. The Internet mirrors that to such a degree you can actually see it. Show me your search history and I'll show you who you are.

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 never feel so alive as when I'm writing and the work is going well.