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

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" Every poem probably has sixty drafts behind it. "

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

" 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. "

" I've been teaching classes on memoirs since 1986, and I've been reading them all my life, and I think that I would like to write a critical book that might have some of those how-to elements in it. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" Most of the people I write about I'm still in touch with, so I would be loath to make up stuff about them. "

" 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 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 do have a really good memory. I mean, like, I can remember all the phone numbers of everybody on the street I grew up on. "

" Young writers often mistakenly choose a certain vein or style based on who they want to be, unconsciously trying to blot out who they actually are. You want to escape yourself. "

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

" Both my parents were agnostic. My mother was kind of a Buddhist. She had some spiritual tendencies, but they were kind of flaky - New Agey, you know? Which is partly why I'm suspicious of that sort of thing. I'm skeptical of any spiritual practice that doesn't involve other people and doesn't involve some sort of consistent tradition. "

" 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. "

" I'm doomed to act like myself, even when it's inconvenient! "

" I've never contended that I had a really horrible life. "

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

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

" 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. "

" I tell people not to write too soon about their lives. Writing about yourself too young is loaded with psychological complexities. "

" There are all kinds of things God wants me to do that I'm very obstreperous about. "

" 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'm not nearly smart enough or imaginative enough to tackle the novel form. Never happen. "

" 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. "

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

Overnight Success

" When I got sober, I thought giving up was saying goodbye to all the fun and all the sparkle, and it turned out to be just the opposite. That's when the sparkle started for me. "