To hear something asks very little of us. To listen places our entire being on notice.

Most of all, differences of opinion are opportunities for learning.

My family lives all around me. We see each other daily. It's very, very complicated. I think that families hold us together and they split us apart.

We mask our needs as the needs of others.

Pico Iyer describes his writing as "intimate letters to a stranger," and I think that is what the writing process is. It begins with a question, and then you follow this path of exploration.

Style is like voice, it grows organically from the truth of one's own life experience. Not in terms of chapters, per se, but in terms of stories. It is the story itself that creates an inherent structure.

Today, I feel stronger, learning to live within the natural cycles of a day and to not expect too much of myself. As women, we hold the moon in our bellies. It is too much to ask to operate on full-moon energy three hundred and sixty-five days a year. I am in a crescent phase.