There's a lot of things you can't see if you aren't' looking.

I realized it was like looking into the sun—you shouldn't do it, because you'd turn your face away and be blind to everything else.

I feel I'm able to get rid of any demons lurking in my psyche through my writing, which leaves me free to create all of this and to enjoy our family life, stepping away from all the fictional traumas and the dramas. If I write about family in crisis, then I won't have to live through it, I guess.

Sometimes I think the human heart is just a simple shelf. There is only so much you can pile onto it before something falls off an edge and you are left to pick up the pieces.

If you've lived through it, you already know there are no words that will ever come close to describing it, and if you didn't - you will never understand.

When you have been burned by fire once, you don't leap into the flames again.

You need to learn to write on demand, and to get critiqued without flinching. When someone can rip your work to shreds without it feeling as though your arm has been hacked off, you're ready to send your novel off to an agent.