If you're going into a very dark place, then you should take a bright light, and shine it on everything. If you don't want to see, why in God's name would you dare the dark at all?

When you put on a clown suit and a rubber nose, nobody has any idea what you look like inside.

The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them.

I don't mean that creative people are somehow finer, or more sensitive, and thus have finer, more sensitive nervous breakdowns - you can save that horseshit for the Sylvia Plath worshipers. It's just that creative people have creative breakdowns.

Only two things happen to writers when they die: Either their work survives, or it becomes forgotten.

Once I start work on a project, I don’t stop and I don’t slow down unless I absolutely have to. If I don’t write every day, the characters begin to stale off in my mind – they begin to seem like characters instead of real people. The tale’s narrative cutting edge starts to rust and I begin to lose my hold on the story’s plot and pace. Worst of all, the excitement of spinning something new begins to fade. The work starts to feel like work, and for most writers that is the smooch of death.

Don't look back, never look back. How often do people tell themselves that after an experience that is exceptionally good (or exceptionally bad?)? Often, I suppose. And the advice usually goes unheeded. Humans were built to look back; that's why we have tat swivel joint in our necks.