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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" As a memoirist, I strive for veracity. "

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

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

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

" Every poem probably has sixty drafts behind it. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

Overnight Success

" Age about 30, I stopped looking up my books in bookstores. Paying attention to the marketplace isn't a healthy thing for me. "

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

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

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

" The emotional stakes a memoirist bets with could not be higher, and it's physically enervating. I nap on a daily basis like a cross-country trucker. "

" Prose cannot compete with the economy of poetry, the ability to have a full artistic experience in a short period of time. "

" 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. "

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

" Childhood was terrifying for me. A kid has no control. You're three feet tall, flat broke, unemployed, and illiterate. Terror snaps you awake. You pay keen attention. People can just pick you up and move you and put you down. "

" Poetry privileges music and is aesthetically more challenging. Prose privileges information and is emotionally more challenging. "

" If dysfunction means that a family doesn't work, then every family ambles into some arena in which that happens, where relationships get strained or even break down entirely. We fail each other or disappoint each other. That goes for parents, siblings, kids, marriage partners - the whole enchilada. "