The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there... and still on your feet.

...it was more like bleeding than crying.

Talent is a dreadfully cheap commodity, cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work and study; a constant process of honing. Talent is a dull knife that will cut nothing unless it is wielded with great force.

All you need to do is hold on tight...and believe.

For a moment he felt a wild hope: perhaps this really was a nightmare. Perhaps he would awake in his own bed, bathed in sweat, shaking, maybe even crying . . . but alive. Safe. Then he pushed the thought away. Its charm was deadly, its comfort fatal.

I get inspiration, a lot of times, from very commonplace things that just strike a chord and develop themselves in the subconscious.

You have to stay faithful to what you're working on.