Asking for advice about what you should write is a little like asking for help getting dressed. I can you tell you what I think looks good, but you have to wear it. And as every fashion victim knows, very few people look good in everything.

The world doesn’t fully make sense until the writer has secured his version of it on the page. And the act of writing is strangely more lifelike than life….every person who does serious time with a keyboard is attempting to translate his version of the world into words so that he might be understood…. Your job is to marshal the talent you do have and find people who believe in your work. What’s important, finally, is that you create, and that those creations define for you what matters most, that which cannot be extinguished even in the face of silence, solitude, and rejection.

No matter how many compromises were made along the way, no matter what happens in the future, a book is a thing to behold.

The writer labors in isolation, yet all that intensive, lonely work is in the service of communicating, is an attempt to reach another person.

Fear of failure is the reason most often cited to explain why so many aspiring writers never realize their dreams. But I think it’s that same fear of failure that absolutely invigorates those who do push through-that is, the fear of not being heard.

Asking for advice about what you should write is a little like asking for help getting dressed. I can you tell you what I think looks good, but you have to wear it. And as every fashion victim knows, very few people look good in everything.

Indeed, the great paradox of the writer's life is how much time he spends alone trying to connect with other people.