Literature gives us the great gift of the present moment.

Nobody cares much whether you write or not. You just have to do it

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

The aim is to burn through to first thoughts, to the place where energy is unobstructed by social politeness or the internal censor, to the place where you are writing what you mind actually sees and feels, not what it thinks it should see or feel.

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

Handwriting is more connected to the movement of the heart.

That daydreaming seemed important at the time, but when I asked my teacher Katagiri Roshi about it, he said, "Oh, it's just laziness. Get to work." But as for discipline, I don't even use that word. I think more about passion or love. What I've really learned is the way the mind moves, and how the mind works. Rather than discipline, I know how to seduce my mind.