It's only a little secret, but having a secret makes me feel better. Like a human being again.

When you write you tell yourself a story. When you rewrite you take out everything that is NOT the story.

Death is a mystery, and burial is a secret.

When I gave up dope and alcohol, my immediate feeling was 'I've saved my life, but there'll be a price because I'll have nothing that buzzes me any more'. But I enjoyed my kids. My wife loved me and I loved her. And eventually the writing came back and I discovered that the writing was enough. Stupid thing is that probably it always had been.

It didn´t occur to me until later that there´s another truth, very simple: greed in a good cause is still greed.

Be true, be brave, stand All the rest is darkness.

Some of this book—perhaps too much—has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it—and perhaps the best of it—is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.