I wrote to explain my own life to myself, stories are the vessels I use to interpret the world to myself.

A recipe is a story that ends with a good meal.

My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.

You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself up to all experience. Let life pour through you the way light pours through leaves.

My soul found ease and rest in the companionship of books.

I lived with the terrible knowledge that one day I would be an old man still waiting for my real life to start. Already, I pitied that old man.

She thought she brought a gift of compassion for those exhausted souls who had not received a chest portion from the people who raised them. If compassion and therapy did not work, she could always send her patients to the local pharmacy for drugs.