We can't protect ourselves from pain and heartache.

There’s a great expression in Twelve Step programs: Act as if. Act as if you’re a writer. Sit down and begin. Act as if you might just create something beautiful, and by beautiful I mean something authentic and universal. Don’t wait for anybody to tell you it’s okay. Take that shimmer and show us our humanity. That’s your job.

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

In every generation there is a vault-keeper, one who guards the links fiercely and knows they are more precious than rubies.

Maggie Shipstead takes hold of the reader and doesn't let go. Astonish Me is a haunting, powerful novel.

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

It is only with distance that we are able to turn our powers of observation on ourselves, thus fashioning stories in which we are characters.