Stay alert. The big moral crossroads in your life may not come labeled as such.

All along, my mantra was: Don't write unless it contributes to the emotion, and do anything you do in service of the emotion only.

When you do something that's going to speak to people, it's going to be because you're really allowing all of yourself to the table in an accepting way.

I know that my only chance at any kind of depth or profundity is to linger within the story, trying to make it distinguish itself.

Whole swaths of the book [Lincoln in the Bardo] are made up of verbatim quotes from various historical sources, which I cut up and rearranged to form part of the narrative.

I've found that my first drafts are not so special. But the more I work on them, the better they get. They are more unique and defensible.

Anyone can be shamed, but feeling guilt requires empathy within.