Well, by now you must know yourself, honey, whatever you do, life don't stop. It only sits a minute and dreams a dream.

I might write four lines or I might write twenty. I subtract and I add until I really hit something I want to do. You don't always whittle down, sometimes you whittle up.

The wrong word is like a lie jammed inside the story.

Sometimes you find that what is most personal is also what connects you most strongly with others.

In the end, long life is the reward, strength, and beauty.

I really believe one of the jobs of a writer is to stretch as far as you can into other voices.

My language limitations here are real. My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life. If I really knew this language, there would surely be in my head, as there is in Webster's or the Dictionary of American Slang, that unreducible verb designed to tell a person like me what to do next.