As a writer we are our own instruments; we need to protect our instrument, because no one will protect it if we don't.

I try to remember that the job - as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy - of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it.

It is in the thousands of days of trying, failing, sitting, thinking, resisting, dreaming, raveling, unraveling that we are at our most engaged, alert, and alive.

Writing has been my window-flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence-my way of interpreting everything within my grasp.

Everything you need to know about life can be learned from a genuine and ongoing attempt to write

If I dismiss the ordinary—waiting for the special, the extreme, the extraordinary to happen - I may just miss my life.

I do whatever is necessary in order to maintain the equanimity we all need to withstand the disappointment and rejection that are the lot of every writer, no matter where we are in our careers.

The only graceful thing to do is recognize and embrace what is actually happening, rather than fight against it.

My desk is covered with talismans: pieces of rose quartz, wishing stones from a favorite beach.

How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'

If you are a writer or any kind of artist, if you change something as fundamental as where you live - the way you live - then I think you change the very instrument that is trying to make the art

The power of social media is it forces necessary change.

A mother! What are we worth really? They all grow up whether you look after them or not.

There exists everywhere a medium in things, determined by equilibrium.

I like it when the waiter askes you if you want parmesan cheese on your dinner, yeah, give me essence of puke all over me tea!

Back in the 1960s, I saw Peter, Paul and Mary. I was at that age, about 14, and I was mesmerized.

I have spent most of my life studying the lives of other peoples - faraway peoples - so that Americans might better understand themselves.

Great loves were almost always great tragedies. Perhaps it was because love was never truly great until the element of sacrifice entered into it.

I try to avoid political ties.

Many things about American life, that even secular people consider good, have flowed from the presence of a robust, resilient institutional Christianity.

I would love to work with Bill Murray. I've always been such a big fan. I think he's obviously a great comedic actor but a really interesting actor.