The Internet and all its lures are much, much harder than anything I've ever encountered. If you're writing on a computer, the very instrument you're writing on is already tainted by the world out there in all its permutations.

If we grew up with nothing, we're complicated with that. That's the thing I keep hearing from people.

As writers, it is our job not only to imagine, but to witness.

If I waited to be in the mood to write, I'd barely have a chapbook of material to my name. Who would ever be in the mood to write? Do marathon runners get in the mood to run? Do teachers wake up with the urge to lecture? I don't know, but I doubt it. My guess is that it's the very act that is generative. The doing of the thing that makes possible the desire for it.

As a writer we are our own instruments; we need to protect our instrument, because no one will protect it if we don't.

Our pain is a part of who we authentically are.

If you write memoir, it can't be about blame or hurt; it has to be creative.