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

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" As a memoirist, I strive for veracity. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" Every poem probably has sixty drafts behind it. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

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

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

Overnight Success

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

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

" 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. "

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

" I think being tortured as a virtue is a kind of antiquated sense of what it is to be an artist. It comes out of that Symbolist idea, back to Rimbaud and all that disordering of the senses and all of that being some exalted state. When I've been that way, I've always been less exalted than I would have liked. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "