It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.

Time was a face on the water, and like the great river before them, it did nothing but flow.

Our time here is brief, our risk enormous. Don't waste the one or increase the other, if you please.

You couldn't not like someone who liked the guitar.

Talent is a wonderful thing, but it won't carry a quitter.

Not writing would be like going the rest of your life without having dreams.

He didn’t know if that was really true or not, but he discovered something which was tremendously liberating: he didn’t care. He was very tired of thinking and thinking and still not knowing. He was also tired of being frightened, like a man who has entered a cave on a lark and now begins to suspect he is lost. Stop thinking about it, then. That’s the solution.