The grace to be a beginner is always the best prayer for an artist.

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

What would a nontoxic god think of your creative goals? Might such a god really exist?

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

We waste a lot of time and a lot of talent trying to write for the common reader, whom we will never meet. Instead we should be writing for our ideal reader.

Love is not love if it is compelled by reason and driven by logic - love exists in spite of those things, not because of them. It is a emotion which needs no fuel to fire it or oxygen to feed it; if you have to look for the why, then stop looking; it was never there at all.

Writing is like listening to a melody line in my head. Note by note, it knows where it wants to go. I follow it and lay it down. I can pare it, shape it, and polish it later...My job is to take down the dribs and drabs - to free-associate, if you will, knowing that the associations have their own plans for where we're going with all this.