Artistic anorexia & sexual avoidance have the same root fears – fear of intimacy, fear of exposure, fear of failure”.

Survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention...the capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.

You are your own Promised Land, your own new frontier.

When you feel yourself to be in critical condition, you must treat yourself as gently as you would a sick friend.

We have this idea that we need to be in the mood to write. We don't.

I believe that I am very lucky to have close friends who are faithful. From my friends, I have learned the importance of perseverance.

And [now] I think I’ll probably write a lot about birds. My new house has a deck that wraps around my writing room; my writing room has many windows, and outside the windows I’ve hung bird feeders … for enticing different species. So I imagine I will be writing about that.