Never underestimate people. They do desire the cut of truth.

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

The odd thing is, that I wrote The Great Spring while I had cancer and it's not about cancer. It was after I was done with cancer that I wrote a book about it.

It's okay to embark on writing because you think it will get you love. At least it gets you going, but it doesn't last. After a while you realize that no one cares that much. Then you find another reason: money. You can dream on that one while the bills pile up. Then you think: "Well, I'm the sensitive type. I have to express myself." Do me a favor. Don't be so sensitive. Be tough. It will get you further along when you get rejected. Finally, you just do it because you happen to like it.

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

What writing practice, like Zen practice does is bring you back to the natural state of mind...The mind is raw, full of energy, alive and hungry. It does not think in the way we were brought up to think-well-mann ered, congenial.

If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you.