And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.

What I find to be very bad advice is the snappy little sentence, 'Write what you know.' It is the most tiresome and stupid advice that could possibly be given. If we write simply about what we know we never grow. We don't develop any facility for languages, or an interest in others, or a desire to travel and explore and face experience head-on. We just coil tighter and tighter into our boring little selves. What one should write about is what interests one.

But the only rhyme he could summon for 'out' was 'sauerkraut,' which lacked poetic glory. He let it go. The right line would come in time. That was the thing about poetry. It crept up through the draws and coulees of the brain.

It takes a year, nephew... a full turn of the calendar, to get over losing someone.

We're all strange inside. We learn how to disguise our differences as we grow up.

What we fear we often rage against.

If you get the landscape right, the characters will step out of it, and they'll be in the right place.