...you need openness and inability to do anything other than get to the point.
Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world.
The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing, succeeding and revising.
Everyone loves something for nothing...even if it costs everything.
Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.
Fools are the only folk on the earth who can absolutely count on getting what they deserve.