Here's the thing about home: you can create it most anywhere, as long as you gather your people around you.

But when she turned her back to the lights, she saw that the night was so dark...She could not see the stars. The world felt as high as the depthless night sky and deeper than she could know. She understood, suddenly and keenly, that she was too small to run away, and she sat on the damp ground and cried.

Her nightmare clung to her like the smell of smoke to cloth.

Writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.

I think the only way to get through this life is laughing hard and constantly, mostly at myself.

The rewrites are a struggle right now. Sometimes I wish writing a book could just be easy for me at last. But when I think about it practically, I am glad it's a struggle. I am (as usual) attempting to write a book that's too hard for me. I'm telling a story I'm not smart enough to tell. The risk of failure is huge. But I prefer it this way. I'm forced to learn, forced to smarten myself up, forced to wrestle. And if it works, then I'll have written something that is better than I am.

I cannot write to anyone outside myself--if I tried, it would be a horrible story, flat and lifeless. I write to myself. That's the only person I'm trying to please.