Women need space and silence. We too quickly give away our energy. There's something about holding that richness.

Literature gives us the great gift of the present moment.

I wonder if I don't give too much of myself to writing: I am always half where I am; the other half is feeding the furnace, kick-starting the heat of creativity. I am making love with someone but at the same time I'm noticing how this graceful hand across my belly might just fit in with the memory of lilacs in Albuquerque in 1974.

Even an ice cream parlor - a definite advantage - does not alleviate the sorrow I feel for a town lacking a bookstore.

Our lives are at once ordinary and mythical. At the same instant we have these magnificent hearts that pump through all sorrow and all winters we are alive on the earth.

Have compassion for yourself when you write. There is no failure - just a big field to wander in.

Too often we take notes on writing, we think about writing but never do it. I want you to walk into the heart of the storm, written words dripping off hair, eyelids, hanging from hands.