When you are not writing, you are a writer too. It doesn't leave you.

In writing with detail, you are turning to face the world. It is a deeply political act, because you are not staying in the heat of your own emotions. You are offering up some good solid bread for the hungry.

I had cancer for fourteen months and wrote a memoir about the experience.

Whether you're keeping a journal or writing as a meditation, it's the same thing. What's important is you're having a relationship with your mind.

After you have finished a piece of work, the work is then none of your business. Go on and do something else.

As writers we need to crack open language.

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.