The most reliable path to glory is base brute effort.

If you want to write in a mature and interesting way, you have to have sympathy for everyone that's involved.

After my parents divorced, my father remarried and my brothers were born when I was twelve and sixteen. I was thunderstruck at these kids. The "baby-ness" of them. Their toes. I had never been around babies before.

You see things really different when your father is so intimately, so indisputably in charge of your continued existence on the planet.

If you need somebody to dig up rocks eight hours a day underwater, call me.

Resisting and avoiding pain sucks energy-and time. The more you let yourself feel those minute-and-a-half hells, the quicker you'll start feeling those minute-and-a-half happinesses.

Maybe it's easier to think about dishonesty and what kind of trouble you can get into as a writer when love and honesty collide and you sidestep that collision, either because you want to protect somebody or you want to blame somebody - which are the usual impulses in love: protection and blame, frequently at the same time - so you don't exactly tell the truth.