“We all create stories to protect ourselves.”

“We all fictionalize ourselves in the process of creating a story out of the raw materials of our life. For some it is a soap opera, for others an epic, but, for all of us, it's an ongoing narrative that we constantly manipulate and reshape, improving (like the best anecdotes) in the retelling. This is not just true of writers. The story is one of the key ways we define and order our experiences as human beings: how we tell ourselves and others who we are.(from the Daily Telegraph)”

“I don't think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die. Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.”

“If we are creating ourselves all the time, then it is never too late to begin creating the bodies we want instead of the ones we mistakenly assume we are stuck with.”

“Innocence invites protection, yet we might be smarter to protect ourselves against it...”

“In the stories we tell ourselves, we tell ourselves.”