Not much comes easy in this world, Sonny. If it does, it's best to be suspicious of it. It's probably not worth much.

Becoming a writer can kind of spoil your reading because you kind of read on tracks. You're reading as someone who wants to enjoy the book but also, as a writer, noticing the techniques that the writer uses and especially the ones that make you want to turn the page to see what happened.

Not much comes easy in this world, Sonny. If it does, it's best to be suspicious of it. It's probably not worth much.

You've got to be a good reader. So whatever genre that you're interested in, read a lot of books about it and it's better than any kind of writing class you'll ever take. You will absorb techniques and then in a lot of cases you can just start writing using the style of the book or the author that you admire and then your own style will emerge out of that. Be a diligent reader and then try to write seriously, professionally and approach everything in writing in a professional way.

A lot of folks just get it in their head that, for instance, like writing memoirs is just easy. You just write down what happened. It doesn't quite work that way.

Despite the ills of our society, we largely live among compassionate, kind and optimistic people who are striving to do good. [...] Learn how to be happy and keep this in mind: You can't be happy unless you stop being afraid.

I had discovered that learning something, no matter how complex, wasn't hard when I had a reason to want to know it.