I wake up thinking: What am I reading? What will I read next? I'm terrified that I'll run out, that I will read through all I want to, and be forced to learn wildflowers at last, to keep awake.

No child on earth was ever meant to be ordinary, and you can see it in them, and they know it, too, but then the times get to them, and the wear out their brains learning what folks expect, and spend their strength trying to rise over those same folks.

There is neither a proportional relationship, nor an inverse one, between a writer’s estimation of a work in progress & its actual quality. The feeling that the work is magnificent, & the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.

We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.

I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.

The more you read, the more you will write. The better the stuff you read, the better the stuff you will write.

Doing something does not require discipline. It creates its own discipline - with a little help from caffeine.