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

Clarity and perseverance are difficult in American society because the basis of capitalism is greed and dissatisfaction.

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.

We must remember that everything is ordinary and extraordinary. It is our minds that either open or close.

[T]he one thing I want for you is to recognize when you are really singing in writing practice and honor that. Trust that. When you were screaming on the page. Maybe that doesn't make a whole book but that is the true seed.

In writing practice, there's no direction. You enter your own mind and follow it where it takes you. We have a great need to connect with our own mind and our own true self. And all of us have a story to tell.

Read books. They are good for us.