First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to re-form it.... The first draft of a book is the most uncertain-where you need guts, the ability to accept the imperfect until it is better.

... we are all terribly alone no matter what people say.

(Clothes) cannot change a man's nature. He's either kind or he isn't, with or without clothes.

Where to look if you've lost your mind?

I fix what's broken - except in the heart.

... it's possible to let love fly by like a cloud in a windy sky if one is too timid, or perhaps unable to believe he is entitled to good fortune.

Charity you can give even when you haven't got.