You live and then you die, I thought. It's good to have some good times.

We have to accept ourselves in order to write. Now none of us does that fully: few of us do it even halfway. Don’t wait for one hundred percent acceptance of yourself before you write, or even eight percent acceptance. Just write. The process of writing is an activity that teaches us about acceptance.

We are each a concert reverberating with our whole lives and reflecting and amplifying the world around us.

In the end, you have to just sit down, shut up, and write.

I think talent is like a water table under the earth—you tap it with your effort and it comes through you.

The deepest secret in our heart of hearts is that we are writing because we love the world.

I feel very rich when I have time to write and very poor when I get a regular paycheck and no time at my real work.