My desk is covered with talismans: pieces of rose quartz, wishing stones from a favorite beach.

There is no end to the promotion. There is no end to the possibilities. You can continue to promote a book for years, literally.

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.

I never troll for material. It simply presents itself, and is always unmistakable. This is why I want to roll my eyes when people interrupt themselves in the middle of some story they're telling me to say, "You know you can't write about this."

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

I remember getting my first cell phone in New York, getting into a taxi and thinking "This is the end of solitude in the back of a taxi." What used to happen in the back of a taxi? You looked out the window. My brain has become less able to spend lengths of time without shifting, and I worry about that.

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