The things that make you a functional citizen in society - manners, discretion, cordiality - don't necessarily make you a good writer. Writing needs raw truth, wants your suffering and darkness on the table, revels in a cutting mind that takes no prisoners.

Writing is not a McDonald's Hamburger.

Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.

I told all kinds of stories about going to Japan, about playing ball with my father... I wanted to record my life in case it was going to end soon. So, I wrote that and it was very comforting to have that practice in the afternoons in my living room. I just wrote about my life.

I don't know anything but writing practice, and so what I really do is direct that energy as if it were flowing down a river.

To encounter a fine book and have time to read it is a wonderful thing.

I don't mean to be flippant about cancer - it was hard, it was tough and it was scary. Then my next manuscript was about cancer because I had a whole new topic to write about. And because I wrote, it didn't take over. Writing took the chaos out of cancer.