Literature is about being a complex, contradictory human being.

It's always gratifying to hear from a passionate reader, and as a longtime educator, I'm especially pleased and heartened when that reader is a young student who is inspired to write me and let me know that my book has helped him or her find her way.

But the sensibility of the writer, whether fiction or poetry, comes from paying attention. I tell my students that writing doesn't begin when you sit down to write. It's a way of being in the world, and the essence of it is paying attention.

It's like my whole world is coming undone, but when I write, my pencil is a needle and thread, and I'm stitching the scraps back together.

How we lie to ourselves when we've fallen in love with the wrong man.

I admit that for me love goes deeper than the struggle, or maybe what I mean is, love is the deeper struggle.

A book does not discriminate against any reader. All are welcome at the table of literature.