Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write.

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.

Our lives are at once ordinary and mythical. At the same instant we have these magnificent hearts that pump through all sorrow and all winters we are alive on the earth.

To stay close and intimate with experience is to stay close to the mind; the nitty gritty mind of the way things really are.

So writing is not just writing. It is also having a relationship with other writers. And don't be jealous, especially secretly. That's the worst kind. If someone writes something great, it's just more clarity in the world for all of us.

Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write.

One poem or story doesn't matter one way or the other. It's the process of writing and life that matters.