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

Do you write novels?" I said. "Novels, Lord no," she said. "I can't even stay married.

There was something about the prairie for me—it wasn’t where I had come from, but when I moved there it just took me in and I knew I couldn’t ever stop living under that big sky.

I wanted her to see that the only life worth living is a life full of love; that loss is always part of the equation; that love and loss conjoined are the best opportunity we get to live fully, to be our strongest, our most compassionate, our most graceful selves.

I've been to a lot of school and read a lot of thick books, but at my very core there's a made-for-TV-movie mentality I don't think i will ever shake.

Being in the presence of the "other" seems to show me who I am in a way that is really important to me. I feel radically more comfortable in Laos, say, than I do in Pennsylvania.

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