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Writing is an extreme privilege but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself and it's a gift of giving a story to someone.

The act of writing is a way of tricking yourself into revealing something that you would never consciously put into the world. Sometimes I'm shocked by the deeply personal things I've put into books without realizing it.

Writing is a way of getting at the things most people would prefer to escape. Writing takes me to the center of life. That's my invitation to my readers as well.

Writing is a way of processing our lives. And it can be a way of healing.

Writing is so entwined with my being that I can't imagine a life without it.

My feeling is that writing is, for me, a pathological condition. That could sound like a mystical experience, and it may be a mystical experience, but I have learnt just to go with it.

When you write, you write out of your best self. Everything else drops away.

Writing, for me, was a feat of self-preservation. If I did not do it, I would die. So I did it. Obstinacy, not talent, saved my life.

Writing is a spiritual practice in that people that have no spiritual path can undertake it and, as they write, they begin to wake up to a larger connection. After a while, people tend to find that there is some muse that they are connecting to.