When you feel yourself to be in critical condition, you must treat yourself as gently as you would a sick friend.

The opposite of Prosperity is not poverty. It is anxiety.

Fatigue can make it hard to have faith. Too much busyness can make it hard to have faith. Too much of too little solitude can impact faith. For that matter, so can a bout of hunger or overwork, anything carried to an extreme. Faith thrives on routine. Look at any monastery and you will see that. Faith keeps on keeping on.

Perfectionism doesn't believe in practice shots. It doesn't believe in improvement. Perfectionism has never heard that anything worth doing is worth doing badly--and that if we allow ourselves to do something badly we might in time become quite good at it. Perfectionism measures our beginner's work against the finished work of masters. Perfectionism thrives on comparison and competition. It doesn't know how to say, "Good try," or "Job well done." The critic does not believe in creative glee--or any glee at all, for that matter. No, perfectionism is a serious matter.

Writing is an act of cherishing... It is an act of love.

There is a connection between self-nurturing and self-respect.

Creativity - like human life itself - begins in darkness... bright ideas are preceded by a gestation period that is interior, murky, and completely necessary.