For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.
I was raised with no religious training or influence. Except the influence was to be a moral and ethical person at the secular level. And to be a peace marcher, an activist for civil rights, peace and...
My mother was a not-too-devoted atheist. She went to Episcopal church on Christmas Eve every year, and that was mostly it.
I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.
There are few experiences as depressing as that anxious barren state known as writer's block, where you sit staring at your blank page like a cadaver, feeling your mind congeal, feeling you talent run...
Teenagers who do not go to church are adored by God, but they don't get to meet some of the people who love God back.
I was terrified of death by the time I was three or four, actively if not lucidly. I had frequent nightmares about snakes and scary neighbors. By the age of four or five, I was terrified by my thought...
I wish I had thrown out the bathroom scale at age 16. Weighing yourself every morning is like waking up and asking Dick Cheney to validate your sense of inner worth.
I hate how long it takes to feel radical, militantly maternal self-acceptance.
For too long, and despite what people told me, I had fallen for what the culture said about beauty, youth, features, heights, weights, hair textures, upper arms.
We can see Spirit made visible when people are kind to one another, especially when it's a really busy person, like you, taking care of a needy, annoying, neurotic person, like you.
God can't clean the house of you when you're still in it.
Beauty is a miracle of things going together imperfectly.
When humans experience something as powerful as a forest or a rainbow, it is not crazy to assign its existence to a Greater Intelligence.
Writing like this is a little like milking a cow: the milk is so rich and delicious, and the cow is so glad you did it.
I'll live as well, as deeply, as madly as I can--until I die.
I don't remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart you don't even know exist until you love a child.
I danced alone for a couple of years, and came to believe that I might not ever have a passionate romantic relationship—might end up alone! I’d always been terrified of this. But I’d rather not ever b...
The worst part about celebrating another birthday is the shock that you're only as well as you are.
Writing takes a combination of sophistication and innocence; it takes conscience, our belief that something is beautiful because it is right.