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" Every poem probably has sixty drafts behind it. "

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" I don't think I look like the pope's favorite Catholic - at least not under close scrutiny. "

" I think we fall in love and become adults and become citizens in a way by writing stories about ourselves. "

" I find a great deal of comfort and care in my faith and prayer. I'd sooner do without air than prayer. "

" Success has affected my self-definition in that I have more money. Writers pooh-pooh that idea, but it's a huge deal. "

" I don't have a copy of my books, and the degree to which I never read them is profound. I never look. "

" I believe in God, but even if you don't, you can believe in a self, the person who is innately who you are. Once you fully become that person, then everything you do will be blessed. "

" I'm always astonished by the confidence my readers put in me. "

" There are women succeeding beyond their wildest dreams because of their sobriety. "

" I get about five memoirs per week in my mailbox, and few of them inspire anything but a desire to pick up the channel changer. "

" The truth is when I went to graduate school I would've said I was among the least talented of the students, I was certainly the least smart, or less educated. But I worked very hard. "

" Nobody sounds good writing about your divorce, let's face it. "

" Writing about prayer to a secular audience is tap-dancing on the radio. I want to say, 'Gee whiz, isn't this great,' and have everyone's head cocked like the RCA dog. "

" I was 40 years old before I became an overnight success, and I'd been publishing for 20 years. "

Overnight Success

" For days on end, I avoid the Web, never logging in until about two or three, after I've written all morning. On a good week, I don't go online till after Wednesday, so four or five days might lapse without my checking e-mail. "

" I'm always terrified when I'm writing. "

" My idea of art is, you write something that makes people feel so strongly that they get some conviction about who they want to be or what they want to do. It's morally useful not in a political way, but it makes your heart bigger; it's emotionally and spiritually empowering. "

" When people suffer, their relationships usually suffer as well. Period. And we all suffer because, as the Buddha says, that's the nature of being human and wanting stuff we don't always get. "

" Poetry is for me Eucharistic. You take someone else's suffering into your body, their passion comes into your body, and in doing that you commune, you take communion, you make a community with others. "

" The thing I have to do as a writer, and that God permits me to do, is that I have to be willing to fail. "

" Having a great dad probably permitted me to pal around with guys in a way that some women don't. "

" I have a completely addictive personality. Diet Coke is my last - God, I know people counting days off Diet Coke; I'm such a Diet Cokehead. Now I won't let myself buy it. "

" The audiobooks I buy are never first-time reads - only rereadings of books I know well that I find intoxicating. "

" I think the problem with visual media like TV is that they're reductive. "

" It's completely through prayer that I came to believe in God. I just sensed a presence south of my neck. "

" The failures of other genres to provide an emotional connection with some of their characters and narratives gives memoir a toehold. "

" I always thought my family was so bizarre, so when people started coming up to me and saying, 'My family was exactly like yours,' I was completely knocked out. "

" I was a philosophy major as an undergraduate, and I'm just an arrogant little thing. It's hard for me to admit that I can't understand something, let alone not be in charge of it. "

" As a memoirist, I strive for veracity. "

" On a piece of prose, you have to work at least six hours a day. I don't know how you can do that and teach and raise a kid and paint the house. "

" People who didn't live pre-Internet can't grasp how devoid of ideas life in my hometown was. The only bookstores sold Bibles the size of coffee tables and dashboard Virgin Marys that glowed in the dark. "