The more important question, of course, was what the new Lucy would do, and even though I was pretty sure the old Lucy wouldn't be around much anymore, I was a little bit afraid the new Lucy hadn't yet shown up.

There's this great Ron Carlson story, "A Note on the Type," and it's about this guy who keeps escaping from prison. He's really good at escaping, but he gets caught all the time, because he can't stop writing his name on underpasses where he's running from the law. And there's this whole beautiful paragraph about how to run is to write. And, you know, it's obviously about the writer's life.

I've always said the toughest thing about learning to feel your feelings is that then you have to feel your feelings.

I'm not very interested in telling the facts. I have a lot of investment in telling the truth.

The Universe has a plan to make sure we don't ever stop learning, not only in our minds, but also in our hearts.

Traveling is my priority, because it drives the writing, so I teach around the travel, and sometimes the travel is the teaching.

I'm about going out in the world and noticing stuff, and going home and writing it down, and putting it next to other stuff I've noticed and seeing what happens.