Exercise the writing muscle every day.

All writers write about themselves, just as the old storytellers chose to tell stories that spoke to and about themselves. They call it the world, but it is themselves they portray. The world of which they write is like a mirror that reflects the inside of their hearts, often more truly than they know.

The magical story is not a microscope but a mirror, not a drop of water but a well. It is not simply one thing or two, but a multitude. It is at once both lucid and opaque, it accepts both dark and light, speaks to youth and old age.

Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood.

You write to be read. That is the bottom line.

You are a name, not a number. Never forget that name, whatever they tell you here. You will always be Chaya—life—to me.

Wood may remain twenty years in the water, but it is still not a fish.