You don't want people to think you're just writing stories for children about a pig in a tutu.

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.

Regret is counterproductive. It's looking back on a past that you can't change. Questioning things as they occur can prevent regret in the future.

Expose the Jesuit order and learn about the global genocide. Speak out, even when what you have to say is not popular.

My mother is not evil, Faith reminded herself. She is just a perfectly sensible snake, protecting her eggs and making her way in the world as best she can.

I knew that I must paint not what I saw, but only what was in me, in my soul.

Fear is like water. You need it. And it's good for you, as long as you have the right amount.

I swear, if you existed I'd divorce you.

What I am proposing is that we invest from the middle out and the ground up, not the top down. That is not going to work.

I saw Chekhov a number of times in English, and I thought that it translates very well in English, for some reason, from the Russian to the English.

We all look the same with our helmets on.

Sublime upon sublime scarcely presents a contrast, and we need a little rest from everything, even the beautiful.