So even though I couldn't bear writing about cancer, I faced it every day.

The first thing is how awful cancer was, the experience. When you first go through it, you're just trying to survive. But when I wrote about it, I really digested it. It was unbearable but I had practice behind me.

We are searching for the core of our lives; our culture intuits that writing, that ancient activity, might be the pathway...Awakening does not feed ego's needs and desires; it pulverizes the self. Our society couldn't knowingly bear such reduction, so we've tricked ourselves into the same path but call it writing.

As writers we need to crack open language.

I think talent is like a water table under the earth—you tap it with your effort and it comes through you.

Handwriting is more connected to the movement of the heart.

Every moment is enormous and it is all we have.