We are tyrannized by our options.

The truth is in the present moment.

You can start your day over anytime.

Courage is more important than confidence

We don't choose what's going to wake us up.

Logic and faith don't occupy the same side.

Our pain is a part of who we authentically are.

I did want to feel like life's all of one piece.

We can't protect ourselves from pain and heartache.

I'm an urban person who loves living in the country.

Traces that live within us often lead us to our stories

Recognize the possibility of the divine in any given moment.

As writers, it is our job not only to imagine, but to witness.

Open your hearts. Deep inside ourselves, we are all one and the same.

I never feel so alive as when I'm writing and the work is going well.

I used to act in television commercials when I was a kid and a young adult.

If you write memoir, it can't be about blame or hurt; it has to be creative.

How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'

I could spend two years cross-legged on my floor and feel like I was working.

I knew I wanted to be a writer before I knew that being a writer was possible.

In my life as a wife and mother, I'm always conscious of my desire to be present.

From spiritual connection springs kindness, connection, social activism, and love.

I found myself doing so much public speaking, more and more and bigger and bigger.

Moving to the country has been incredibly good for my work, for my sense of perspective.

Everything I know about life I learned from the daily practice of sitting down to write.

What was going on inside of me became louder because everything around me became quieter.

I'm very disciplined, but the one thing that I have addictive behavior about is the Internet.

I've always felt like my nose is pressed to glass. I always feel a little bit like an outsider.

My desk is covered with talismans: pieces of rose quartz, wishing stones from a favorite beach.

Everything you need to know about life can be learned from a genuine and ongoing attempt to write

Everything changes. The more I try to hold on to the moment, the more it slips through my fingers.

My parents made the decision never to focus on my looks, and I had no sense of myself as beautiful.

When it comes to the personal essays I write, I just convince myself that no one will ever read them.

If we grew up with nothing, we're complicated with that. That's the thing I keep hearing from people.

Maggie Shipstead takes hold of the reader and doesn't let go. Astonish Me is a haunting, powerful novel.

All there is to do, right at this very moment, is to breathe in, breathe out, and kiss the joy as it flies.

In a creative journey, it is essential, no matter how far one runs, to examine that which is closest to home.

When I sit down with my notebook, when I start scribbling words across the page, I find out what I’m feeling.

When I sit down with my notebook, when I start scribbling words across the page, I find out what I'm feeling.

Our minds have a tendency to wander. To duck and feint and keep us at a slight remove from the moment at hand.

The only graceful thing to do is recognize and embrace what is actually happening, rather than fight against it.

It's easier in an urban world to cast the blame outward. So I've learned a lot about my own process in that way.

Michael Lowenthal has written a big-hearted and wise book about familial love in all its richness and complexity.

I don't want to lean back into the past, or forward into the future. I don't want to wish the present moment away.

What's more important that spiritual life? It seems to me it's the bedrock of everything essential about being human.

I think there's something about a writer's disposition, that is, even if unaware, always slightly in a witness state.

I'm most connected to myself when I'm alone in a room, moving my hand across a page. That's when I feel most like me.

If I dismiss the ordinary—waiting for the special, the extreme, the extraordinary to happen - I may just miss my life.

As a writer we are our own instruments; we need to protect our instrument, because no one will protect it if we don't.

Music inspires me and puts me in the right mood, but to actually listen to it when I write - I find it gets in the way.

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