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

Success is so fleeting, even if you get a good book deal or your book is a huge success, there's always the fear: What about the next one?

I do keep a tiny little journal in which I write passages that I read and want to hold on to. This practice is sort of the opposite of Twitter.

There are books that a writer undertakes because she wants to go on a journey, and there are journeys a writer undertakes because she wants to write a book.

Let me tell you something about hypochondria: It's a pernicious, undermining little demon. It won't kill you, but it will sap the color from your life so that in the loveliest moments, the moments of grace, you are hit with that whisper in your ear that takes it all away. I'm sick, I'm dying - I just don't know it yet.

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

Writing has been my window-flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence-my way of interpreting everything within my grasp.