Skepticism doesn't help you hear.

Once you free yourself from the need for perfect acceptance, it's a lot easier to launch work that matters.

Somewhere in the world, someone is doing something that you decided couldn't be done.

All the creativity books in the world aren’t going to help you if you’re unwilling to have lousy, lame, and even dangerously bad ideas.

Will you succeed because you are more well-rounded than others? Because you fit in better than everyone else? Bloody unlikely. We succeed when we are trusted to be the best at what we do.

Laptop computers dramatically increased the time people spend doing work. (The internet dramatically decreased it, so we're even).

I wonder why anyone would hesitate to be generous with their writing. I mean, if you really want to make a living, go to Wall Street and trade oil futures ... We're writers. We're doing something that is inherently a generous act. We're exposing ourselves to the muse and to the things that frighten us. Why do that if you're not willing to be generous? And paradoxically, almost ironically, it turns out that the more generous you are, the more money you make. But that's secondary. For me, the privilege of being generous is why I get to do this.