A creative writing class may be one of the last places you can go where your life still matters.

Scholars look for final truths they will never find. Creative writers concern themselves with possibilities that are always there to the receptive.

A poet is seldom hard up for advice. The worst part of it all is that sometimes the advice is coming from other poets, and they ought to know better.

Assuming you can write clear English sentences, give up all worry about communication. If you want to communicate, use the telephone.

You owe reality nothing and the truth about your feelings everything.

Never want to say anything so strongly that you give up the option of finding something better. If you have to say it, you will.

...an imagined town is at least as real as an actual town. If it isn't, you may be in the wrong business. Our words come from obsessions we must submit to, whatever the social cost. It can be hard. It can be worse forty years from now if you feel you could have done it and didn't. It is narcissistic, vain, egotistical, unrealistic, selfish, and hateful to assume emotional ownership of a town or a word. It is also essential.