I was taught to believe, "If you work hard, you will be successful. If you are not successful, it is because you didn't work hard enough."

We prefer knowing to thinking, because knowing has more immediate value.

Writing is not a profession, it's an addiction.

We all live in an ongoing series of calamities. I don't know of any individual who doesn't have a series of calamities. Life doesn't operate where, you make a certain amount of money, you pay your bills, you move on from day-to-day-to-day. No! What happens is, you make your money, you pay your bills, and then a new bill comes up that's completely unexpected.

I was taught to believe, "If you work hard, you will be successful. If you are not successful, it is because you didn't work hard enough."

Our own personal salvation is to say, "I'm not going to judge myself, or let other people judge me, by my economic worth." We can't, obviously, control how other people will judge us, but - Life's too short to worry about those things. We can't control those things, but we can control how we feel about ourselves. And we work towards that. To say, "My life has been a success. Even if my bank account doesn't indicate it."

And financial problems are exactly the same thing. You're humiliated. You're ashamed. You're embarrassed about telling anyone that you are suffering financial difficulties.