It is very important to go home if you want your work to be whole. You don't have to move in with your parents again and collect a weekly allowance, but you must claim where you come from and look deep into it. Come to honor and embrace it, or at the least, accept it.

I consider writing a legitimate Zen practice.

Writing is the crack through which you can crawl into a bigger world, into your wild mind.

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

Our lives are at once ordinary and mythical. At the same instant we have these magnificent hearts that pump through all sorrow and all winters we are alive on the earth.

When you write, don't say, "I'm going to write a poem." That attitude will freeze you right away. Sit down with the least expectation of yourself; say, "I am free to write the worst junk in the world."

Kill the idea of the lone, suffering artist. Don't make it any harder on yourself.