You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.

To love another another human in all of her splendor and imperfect perfection , it is a magnificent task...tremendous and foolish and human.

[On her and husband Michael Dorris:] We both have title collections. I think a title is like a magnet. It begins to draw these scraps of experience or conversation or memory to it. Eventually, it collects a book.

I tried out the unfamiliar syllables. They fit. They cracked in my ears like a fist through ice.

What men call adventures usually consist of the stoical endurance of appalling daily misery.

I don't pray. When I was young, I vowed I never would be caught begging God. If I want something I get it for myself. I go to church only to show the old hens they don't get me down.

You really need to approach each book as if you have been a failure. . . . If you start to believe your flap-copy, you're finished as a writer.