My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring still.

Grace is like a lake of drinkable water right outside your door. But you stay inside and die of thirst.

Preach it, I say preach it.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans - because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings.

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

Its not where your dreams take you, its where you take your dreams.

When asked how she knows when her writing is where she wants it to be: "I know when it's the best I can do. It may not be the best there is. Another writer may do it much better. But I know when it's the best I can do. I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, 'No. No, I'm finished. Bye.' And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won't do that."