Read books. They are good for us.

I write because I am alone and move through the world alone. No one will know what has passed through me... I write because there are stories that people have forgotten to tell, because I am a woman trying to stand up in my life... I write out of hurt and how to make hurt okay; how to make myself strong and come home, and it may be the only real home I'll ever have.

I don't mean to be flippant about cancer - it was hard, it was tough and it was scary. Then my next manuscript was about cancer because I had a whole new topic to write about. And because I wrote, it didn't take over. Writing took the chaos out of cancer.

If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you.

The only failure in writing is when you stop doing it. Then you fail yourself.

The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter; the act of writing does.

When I wrote and got out of the way, writing did writing.” (p.90)