The words and sentences you take into your body from books are no less sacred and healing than communion. Surely at least one such person lives in your zip code.

As a memoirist, I strive for veracity.

I'm doomed to act like myself, even when it's inconvenient!

Faith is a choice like any other. If you're picking a career or a husband - or deciding whether to have a baby - there are feelings and reasons pro and con out the wazoo. But thinking it through is - at the final hour - horse dookey. You can only try out.

Age about 30, I stopped looking up my books in bookstores. Paying attention to the marketplace isn't a healthy thing for me.

I was 40 years old before I became an overnight success, and I'd been publishing for 20 years.

I always say that a poet loves the world, and the prose writer needs to create an alternative world.