In the past few years I've assigned books to be read before a student attends one of my weeklong seminars. I have been astonished by how few people -- people who supposedly want to write -- read books, and if they read them, how little they examine them.

I don't think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die. Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.

I am free to write the worst junk in the world.

Have compassion for yourself when you write. There is no failure - just a big field to wander in.

A responsibility of literature is to make people awake, present, alive. If the writer wanders, then the reader, too, will wander.

I still write with pen and paper and have someone type it on a computer. But rewriting I do by hand.

Writing is the act of discovery.