I am the kind of woman who loves hurricanes. They put me in a party mood. Make me want to eat oysters on the half shell, and act slutty.

I want to lay up like that, to float unstructured, without ambition or anxiety. I want to inhabit my life like a porch.

I never claimed to be a low-maintenance gal, but when I'm writing, it's particularly challenging. I lose things constantly: my watch, my glasses, my papers, my mind.

It's life. You don't figure it out. You just climb up on the beast and ride.

Life is short but it is wide. This too shall pass.

As a writer, I am not goddess of the universes I create. I am at most a stage manager of the plentiful gifts which tumble out of the horn of plenty, which is to say there is a source so sweet and forgiving and generous that I pray every day to let that source be my guide.

Don't ever admit you know a thing about cooking or it'll be used against you.