You know that you wouldn't take a baby on a plane without diapers, so when you leave your house, take care of you, like you would a baby. Don't leave your house without packing some healthy things.

The experience taught me to be present in the real Buddhist sense of paying attention to the moment.

We can have our hearts broken over so much more. It is important to recognize the full spectrum of heartbreak. We can be heartbroken by lost and by disappointment. But heartbreak is not just this negative image we see, it's not this terrible experience that brings no benefits.

I was very lucky. I don't know German, or Dutch, or Chinese, or Thai. I don't know them, so I can't judge, so I have to go on the word of the publisher that it's a good translation.

I was looking at a lot of experimental writers, and I was very intrigued by short-short fiction, writers who would write little things, what I call buttons now, little vignettes.

The older I get, the more I'm conscious of ways very small things can make a change in the world. Tiny little things, but the world is made up of tiny matters, isn't it?

If you can't fall asleep, learn how to meditate. I would recommend you listen to a beautiful tape called Spiritual Power, Spiritual Practice [Energy Evaluation Meditations For Morning and Evening, 1998]. It was the one that got me out of my writer's block when I was writing Caramelo. It's by Carolyn Myss.