Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. If she doesn’t show up invited, eventually she just shows up

I had a very rough childhood and not a happy one and by age 15 I was an old person in many ways. I knew that I had to take care of myself, I um and I always did.

I met a guy, very exotic to me - he was blonde with blue eyes - and I just had a fling that turned out to be love. I moved to San Francisco to spend a week with him and get him out of my system; I'm still here 26 years later.

I seek truth and beauty in the transparency of an autumn leaf, in the perfect form of a seashell on the beach, in the curve of a woman's back, in the texture of an ancient tree trunk, but also in the elusive forms of reality.

Writing is a constant exercise in longing.

A book is not an end in itself; it is only a way to touch someone - a bridge extended across a space of loneliness and obscurity - and sometimes it is a way of winning other people to our causes.

You write a book and it's like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it in the ocean. You don't know if it will ever reach any shores. And there, you see, sometimes it falls in the hands of the right person.