I married a man once and we had been married over a year before I found he preferred potatoes. I said, "I didn't know you loved potatoes." And he said that until he was about 13, he thought rice was potato seeds.

Putting down on paper what you have to say is an important part of writing, but the words and ideas have to be shaped and cleaned, cleaned as severely as a dog cleans a bone, cleaned until there's not a shred of anything superfluous.

You can see in others what they don't see in themselves and what the world doesn't see in them.

Stand up straight and realize who you are, that you tower over your circumstances. You are a child of God. Stand up straight.

The question is not how to survive, but how to thrive with passion, compassion, humor and style.

We need language to tell us who we are, how we feel, what we're capable of- to explain the pains and glory of our existence.

Nothing will work unless you do.