Such an ego simply forbade certain lines of thought.

Has it ever occurred to you that parents are nothing but overgrown kids until their children drag them into adulthood? Usually kicking and screaming?

You could not turn off love- even the rather absent, sometimes taken for granted love- the way you'd turn off a faucet. Love ran from the heart and the heart had it's own imperatives

Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot if difference. They don't have to makes speeches. Just believing is usually enough.

When the dawn was still long hours away, bad thoughts took on flesh and began to walk. In the middle of the night thoughts became zombies.

Pray for rain all you like, but dig a well as you do it.

Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes. The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story... To make him/her forget, whenever possible, that he/she is reading a story at all.