A culture's ability to understand the world and itself is critical to its survival. But today we are led into the arena of public debate by seers whose main gift is their ability to compel people to continue to watch them.

I've found that my first drafts are not so special. But the more I work on them, the better they get. They are more unique and defensible.

All along, my mantra was: Don't write unless it contributes to the emotion, and do anything you do in service of the emotion only.

It is technically very hard to show positive manifestations. But I can look back at the way I thought and felt even as a little kid and there was a lot of wonder there, and openness to the many sides of life.

Chekhov - shall I be blunt? - is the greatest short story writer who ever lived.

The chances of a person breaking through their own habits and sloth and limited mind to actually write something that gets out there and matters to people are slim.

There's a really nice moment in the life of a piece of writing where the writer starts to get a feeling of it outgrowing him - or he starts to see it having a life of its own that doesn't have anything to do with his ego or his desire to 'be a good writer'.