“It's exactly at these moments, when all hope has vanished, that prayer has dominion.”

“You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway."[Becoming a Writer/ The List, O Magazine, November 2009]”

“What we [writers] do might be done in solitude and with great desperation, but it tends to produce exactly the opposite. It tends to produce community and in many people hope and joy.”

“- Nothing else has any efficacy, I might as well be myself.- But your yourself sucks!- It is, lamentably, all I have.”

“Anger has a way of returning.”

“In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.”

“When you're sixteen a body like this is free; when you're forty it's a full-time occupation.”