Part of my spiritual work is learning to live with the knowledge that we can't protect our loved ones from pain and heartache.

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

Children are mirrors, tape recorders and copy cats. They show us who we REALLY are, repeat EVERYTHING we say and do exactly what we DO. So, smile and be on your best behavior.

. . . distant views seemed to outlast by a million years (Lily thought) the gazer and to be communing already with a sky which beholds an earth entirely at rest.

I write lustily and humorously. It isn't calculated it's the way I think. I've invented a writing style that expresses who I am.

What happens when good people are put into an evil place? Do they triumph or does the situation dominate their past history and morality?

We had more viewers on the broadcast network than we did on the cable channel.

[Barack] Obama, he'll be out of office soon and, frankly,[Donald] Trump relies on him .

Modeling's terrifying to a lot of people. Standing in front of a camera is terrifying. I like a challenge.

Hope means to keep living amid desperation and to keep humming in the darkness.

I write for anybody struggling to manage their money.