It remains unbelievable to me that I have any readers beyond my own blood relations - it's a crazy, wild gift.

The beginning of the end can feel a lot like the middle when you are living in it.

When you're a kid, it's hard to tell the innocuous secrets from the ones that will kill you if you keep them.

Fiction helps me to reconnect with the true, deep weirdness inherent in everyday reality, in our dealings with one another, in just being alive.

It was sad and fierce all at once, alive with a lonely purity.

My older sister has entire kingdoms inside of her, and some of them are only accessible at certain seasons, in certain kinds of weather.

I spent most of my 20s with these alligator wrestlers in the swamps of South Florida.

It is a special kind of homelessness to be evicted from your dreams.

Self-disciplin e is necessary, but so is playfulness, flexibility, joy. When you stop demanding perfection of yourself, your writing desk will become a spacious place.

There are certain prehistoric things that swim beyond extinction.

You small mortals don't realize the power of your stories.

Through the grace of a thief, one can become a thief and through the grace of a Gnani [the enlightened one], one can become a Gnani [the enlightened one].

I found myself being helped down to the car. That sort of help is actually a hindrance. If you ever see someone with a walking stick, that stick, and their arm, are actually a leg.

At times I enjoy writing and at others times I just hate it because it's definitely having to go back and experience some pain and express what you really feel.

If we are true, if we can love, if we have vision, if we can have courage, we can, we should, we ought to, we will.

He who does not lie does not know what truth is.

You are not what you were born, but what you have it in yourself to be.

I love science fiction.

The language you use for your poems should be the language you use with your friends.

You'd think that in a fight, NOT MOVING would be a bad habit!

No religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced [in the elementary schools] inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination.