I read Eve Ensler and thought it was fabulous. Not only that, but it was really the only thing I could relate to about cancer.

I love and care about literature, and great writers are our teachers. You're studying their mind when you read their work.

In the West, a teacher imparts knowledge to a student. In the East, a teacher transmits nothing more or less than his or her Being.

I am free to write the worst junk in the world.

While I had cancer, I wrote these twenty-two personal essays about how I lived my life backed by Zen and writing.

As writers we live life twice, like a cow that eats its food once and then regurgitates it to chew and digest it again. We have a second chance at biting into our experience and examining it. ...This is our life and it's not going to last forever. There isn't time to talk about someday writing that short story or poem or novel. Slow down now, touch what is around you, and out of care and compassion for each moment and detail, put pen to paper and begin to write.

There's an old adage in writing: 'Don't tell, but show.' Writing is not psychology. We do not talk 'about' feelings. Instead the writer feels and through her words awakens those feelings in the reader. The writer takes the reader's hand and guides him through the valley of sorrow and joy without ever having to mention those words.