Take your vitamins. Exercise. Just work to love yourself as much as you can - not more than the people around you but not so much less.

So I did quit coffee and I did quit smoking. But I haven't managed that with drinking!

Writing or making anything-a poem, a bird feeder, a chocolate cake-has self-respect in it. You're working. You're trying. You're not lying down on the ground, having given up.

I did not know him, I knew my idea of him.

Their spirits and their visions are embodied in their craft. And so is mine. It's not Jane Saw Puff. But the clarity of Jane Saw Puff is precious to me.

I'm not sure that the benefit - as a writer and as a citizen - that I would get from reading at least the front page of the Times every day or every other day would outweigh the depression.

I have never thought I could take it, not even for the children. It is all I have wanted to do, to stand between them and and pain. But I come from a long line of women who put themselves first.