I now know that things I always thought I could depend on can crash in an instant. Because of the love that I have been shown, I now know what it means to be ‘beloved.’ I now know that no breath is to be taken for granted.
How wide and sweet and wild motherhood and sisterhood can be.
I believe that illness has led me to a life of gratitude, so I consider Lyme disease at this point in my life to be a blessing in disguise.
At the beauty of what she had stumbled onto, at the fear that something terrible would happen because she was not vigilant enough. She cried at the fear of something so good that she would not be brave enough to bear it.
A scent that disturbs me and delights me. It smells like ripe pears, vetiver, a bit of violet and something else- something spicy almost biting and exotic.
These are all I have. I do not have the wide, bright beacon of some solid old lighthouse, guiding ships safely home, past the jaggedrocks. I only have these little glimmers that flicker and then go out.
When I’m reading, wherever I am, I’m always somewhere else.
Life is short but it is wide. This too shall pass.
I have been missing the point. The point is not knowing another person, or learning to love another person. The point is simply this: how tender can we bear to be? What good manners can we show as we welcome ourselves and others into our hearts?
What they don’t know is that I went over the edge years ago, and lived to tell the tale.
Sadness can find you anywhere, anytime, so you better have fun when you can.
There is the truth of history, and there is the truth of what a person remembers.
Don’t ever admit you know a thing about cooking or it’ll be used against you...
I swear I could write a book about all the things no one has ever thanked me for.
Forget love. Try good manners.
I never claimed to be a low-maintenance gal, but when I’m writing, it’s particularly challenging. I lose things constantly: my watch, my glasses, my papers, my mind.
Sometimes lost treasures can be reclaimed.
The love we most cherish will, of necessity, bring us pain. Because that love is like the setting of a body with broken bones. But I want to stage the setting. I want to direct all scenes.
I am the kind of woman who loves hurricanes. They put me in a party mood. Make me want to eat oysters on the half shell, and act slutty.
I come to writing from hearing great stories as a child in Louisiana, where the mark of a person was his or her ability to be a raconteur. I also come to writing as a professional actress whose body has been trained to listen and smell and inhabit characters without judgment.