I really was a terrible actor. I did it for years in my twenties because it was like being at university again.
I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.
Poetry feels like a country I visit without a passport, where I look around furtively, grab hold of something precious, and try to smuggle it back across the border. Any poem I get written down feels like contraband to me.
It's what you do that makes your soul.
the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners
Will you explain to me why people encourage delusional behaviour in children, and medicate it in adults?
When I look out the window, I exhale a prayer of thanks for the color green, for my children's safety, for the simple acts of faith like planting a garden that helped see us through another spring, another summer. And I inhale some kind of promise to protect my kids' hopes and good intentions we began with in this country. Freedom of speech, the protection of diversity - these are the most important ingredients of American civil life and my own survival. If I ever took them for granted, I don't know.
I'm surprised when people who don't usually smoke weed are into edibles. I can't believe that.
Proust, more perspicaciously than any other writer, reminds us that the 'walks' of childhood form the raw material of our intelligence.
Wisdom corresponds to the future; it is philosophy.
The easiest way for readers to connect with characters and feel sympathy is to make the character entertaining, sympathetic and likeable.