Quote collection
647 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts."
"Anything you say from your heart to God is a prayer. But "why" is rarely a useful question. When Job keeps asking God why he has had such loss and suffering, God says, "You wouldn't understand." I always want to know why, and I almost never have a good answer."
"It's intrusive for grandparents to think they're in charge. It's manipulative. Also, it's self-destructive, since if the parents have to resist you, you won't get your mitts on the kid as often."
"I don't think anything is the opposite of love."
"No matter what circumstances, it's hard to be a parent and maintain a sense of self and identity in the world."
"I don't have any romantic views of parenting. Every step of the way it's really hard. It's a dangerous world, physically and psychologically."
"This business of having been issued a body is deeply confusing... Bodies are so messy and disappointing."
"Tell the truth as you understand it. If you're a writer, you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act - truth is always subversive."
"I see that children fill the existential hollowness many people feel; that when we have children, we know they will need us, and maybe love us, but we don't have a clue how hard it is going to be."
"I'm one of those religious people who are afraid of everything. I'm instantly worried about everything that could go wrong."
"Mostly what happens in the novels never happened in real life."
"He told me about his monster. His sounded just like mine without quite so much mascara. When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are."
"To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind, the mind that so frequently has its head up its own ass."
"Your unconscious can't work when you are breathing down its neck."
"When what we see catches us off guard, and when we write it as realistically and openly as possible, it offers hope. You look around and say, Wow, there's that same mockingbird; there's that woman in the red hat again. The woman in the red hat is about hope because she's in it up to her neck, too, yet every day she puts on that crazy red hat and walks to town."
"We're out there somewhere between the known and the unknown, trying to reel in both for a closer look."
"...after a few days at the desk, telling the truth in an interesting way turns out to be as easy and pleasurable as bathing a cat."
"Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business."
"I would seriously rather be in a long line at the DMV than eat with people I don't know."
"My theology is based on what I tell my Sunday-school kids - that they are loved and chosen, AS IS, now, today. That the moment is holy, sacred, and all there is - and that we are only as sick as our secrets. So TELL IT."