You have to engage with people who are different from you and try to work with their thinking and their mind. That's a real challenge.

Do it from the heart or not at all.

As a writer, if you're prepared to work from your own wound, you're allowing people into the most vulnerable parts of yourself.

The world is surely wide enough to walk without fear.

The crazy thing is that when we go to somebody's house, what's better than looking at their bookshelves? Nobody's ever going to say, "Can I see the index to your Kindle?" It's so depressing and so unsexy. Sure, it's there, but nobody is going to get excited by that.

Do all lovers feel helpless and valiant in the presence of the beloved? Helpless because the need to roll over like a pet dog is never far away. Valiant because you know you would slay a dragon with a pocket knife if you had to.

We're living in a homogenized culture where everything is the same, and books are not a homogenized culture. They are extremely varied, and they're eccentric because they are the product of an individual mind. They are not, in any way, mediated.